Pope offers prayers for Gaza after Israeli air strike kills two Christian women

(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Leo XIV sent a personal message of condolence to the pastor of Gaza City’s only Catholic parish after an Israeli air strike killed five people, including a Christian mother and daughter, early Saturday.

Writing to Fr. Gabriel Romanelli of Holy Family Church, the pope said, “Since learning the painful news of the deaths of Maysa and Mary, I have been praying to God for them, for their families and for the entire community of Gaza. How long, O Lord?” he added as reference to reference to Habakkuk 1:2.

“Thank you for standing by the parish and so many people who only want to live in peace. God bless, with a warm embrace,” the American pope concluded.

Romanelli, who is from Argentina, read the note on October 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, in his daily video update from Gaza.

“The death of Maisa and of Mary has been terrible,” he said. According to his account, the women were asleep in a rented house when, around 1:30 a.m. local time, three Israeli missiles struck the building. Five people were killed — four women, including Maisa and her daughter Mary, a doctor and the doctor’s mother, and a young man — and several others were wounded. The blast destroyed the ground floor and started a fire. Civil Defense workers, he said, continued removing rubble, recovering bodies and the injured “even without equipment, with their own hands.”

Vatican News identified the dead as Maysa Khader Ibrahim Abu Daoud and her daughter, Mary Hafez Michel Najjar, Greek Orthodox women who had recently found a new place of refuge and were trying to rebuild their lives. Their funeral was held the same day at St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church.

Romanelli said Mary, of Greek Orthodox origin, had married in the Catholic Church and that her children — twins Fuad and Ester, and the youngest, Fadi — were baptized Catholic. Mary’s 14-year-old son Fuad, who was elsewhere with his father, later told Middle East Eye, “The force of the explosion threw my mother against the wall, and my grandmother was engulfed in flames after the missile hit the house,” and added, “Today, I lost the most precious person in my life. There are no words to describe how I feel.”

This story is developing…