FILE - Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, speaks during a plenary session at the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit, Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP
Speaking Monday at a reception, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, questioned Israel’s claim to be acting in self-defense by inflicting “carnage” on Gaza.
“Israel’s right to self-defense has been invoked to justify that this operation is proportional, but with 30,000 dead, it’s not,” he said.
The Israeli Embassy to the Holy See called the comments by Parolin “deplorable.”
But in a front-page editorial Thursday in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano titled “Stop the Carnage,” Vatican editorial director Andrea Tornielli doubled down on the Vatican position. Tornielli quoted a Rome-based Holocaust survivor, Edith Bruck, who has been highly critical of the Israeli government’s response, which she has blamed for the rise in antisemitic acts against Jews around the world.
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