By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2026-08-28 00:06:30 | Updated at 2026-09-19 16:21:37
3 weeks ago
Thu Aug 27, 2026 - 7:46 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — Ten Catholic clergy from across Africa, led by South African Cardinal Stephen Brislin, Archbishop of Johannesburg, issued a powerful joint statement last Friday declaring that the policies and actions of the Israeli government in Gaza constitute genocide.
The declaration came from Priests Against Genocide – Africa (PAGA), the continental chapter of the international Priests Against Genocide network.
The association, founded in 2025, has grown rapidly to include more than 2,500 members — priests, bishops, and cardinals — across 67 countries. It advocates for Palestinian rights while grounding its appeals in Catholic social teaching, Sacred Scripture, and international law.
Drawing deeply on Africa’s own history of war, displacement, and apartheid, the signatories insisted their experiences compel them to speak.
“Our continent knows war. We carry the memory of the civil wars in Mozambique and Angola, the Rwanda genocide, and the wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone,” the statement begins. “Today we see war again in Sudan and South Sudan, eastern DRC, the Sahel, and Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique. Millions across Africa have been forced from their homes.”
“We therefore speak about Palestine, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, not because African suffering matters less but because our suffering has taught us to recognise the suffering of others,” the signatories wrote. “Nelson Mandela declared in 1997 that ‘our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.’”
“Having learned to recognise dehumanisation in our own history, we cannot refuse to recognise it in another people,” the clerics affirmed, noting the nation of South Africa, which has experienced the scourge of apartheid in the past, has provided leadership in the world recently bringing a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, charging them with violations of the Genocide Convention.
READ: UN’s top court rules genocide charge against Israel is ‘plausible’
The clergy explicitly defined genocide under international law as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
And citing multiple experts, they concluded that based on “what international legal scholars and world-renowned genocide experts have argued, we believe that the policies and actions of the Government of Israel in Gaza constitute genocide.”
Criticism of Israeli government not ‘antisemitism’
The Catholic clergymen highlighted just one “particularly horrifying feature of this genocide,” describing how “that, for the overwhelming majority of Gaza’s population, there has been no reliable route to safe refuge — only repeated displacement within a closed territory, from one unsafe place to another. To order people to flee when there is no safe place to flee to is not protection.”
Rooting their appeal in African philosophy and Christian tradition, the statement invoked “Ubuntu,” the notion that “our humanity is bound together,” alongside Sacred Scripture: “Where is your brother?” (Gen 4:9) and “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). The Second Vatican Council, they further noted, names genocide among acts that “poison human society” (Gaudium et Spes, 27).
Apparently warding off the standard sinful Zionist rhetorical tactic of calumniating critics of the Israeli regime with the false allegation of “antisemitism,” the cardinal and fellow priests affirmed, “Our condemnation is directed at the Government of Israel and the policies and actions for which it is responsible — not at Jews or Judaism. We reject antisemitism and Islamophobia alike.”
Equally condemning the grave crimes of Hamas on October 7, 2023, they affirmed these “crimes do not diminish Israel’s obligations under international law, nor justify genocide or collective punishment. We will not answer one dehumanisation with another.”
From experience of South Africa, condemnation of Israel’s apartheid regime
Echoing brother and sister Christians in the Holy Land, the African clerics also referenced apartheid comparisons, citing South African bishops who condemned it as “intrinsically evil” as early as 1957. They cited reports from B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, a 2024 ICJ finding of “near-complete separation,” and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s observation that the Holy Land “reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”
“We cannot condemn apartheid in our history and refuse to recognise these patterns inflicted upon Palestinians,” the Catholic clergy signatories wrote.
The Catholic African clerics additionally warned there is “a direct African interest at stake” that entails Israel’s ongoing development of surveillance technologies, including “facial recognition and automated targeting” that have been refined to control Palestinians, “then sold internationally – including in Africa – promoted as ‘combat-proven.’”
Holy Land Christians have described such Israeli technologies as exercising “total control over every aspect of Palestinian life — fragmenting the land, dividing its people, and turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell.”
The African clerics lamented that some nations on their continent “have already encountered the dangers of such technology through systems like Pegasus, and those who design, authorise and deploy such systems remain morally responsible for what they do.”
Demands to ensure ‘a political future grounded in Palestinian self-determination’
And since “genocide must be stopped rather than mourned after the fact,” the statement also included demands: an immediate end to genocidal policies in Gaza and violence in the West Bank with full humanitarian access; an end to forced displacement; cooperation with international judicial mechanisms; suspension of weapons and technologies at risk of misuse (including scrutiny of surveillance and AI systems sold to Africa); ethical review of Christian investments; and sustained support, accountability, and reparations.”
The clerics called for “a political future grounded in Palestinian self-determination and in the dignity, freedom, equality and security of Palestinians and Israelis alike.”
As Africans, the clergy extended the same call to their own governments and the African Union regarding conflicts in Sudan, South Sudan, eastern Congo, and Cabo Delgado.
‘Our answer cannot be silence’
“Our appeal is not made because Palestinian lives are worth more than Israeli or African lives. It is made because Palestinian lives are not worth less,” the signatories affirmed. “Our answer cannot be silence. Our answer cannot be hatred. Our answer must be truth, justice, mercy — and a true peace which is never merely the absence of fighting.”
Cardinal Brislin, appointed Archbishop of Johannesburg in 2024 and a member of the Vatican Dicastery for the Clergy, signed alongside nine other priests and an abbot from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Senegal, Mali, Uganda, and South Africa.
The Priests Against Genocide network has previously condemned Israeli actions in similar terms, growing from Italian origins in 2025 to thousands of members worldwide and issuing statements after incidents, including Israel’s killing of a Catholic priest in a “double-tap” strike in southern Lebanon last March.
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