Pope Leo XIV remembers Gaza’s suffering in first Christmas homily and calls for peace

Pope Leo XIV dur­ing his first Christ­mas Day homi­ly on Thurs­day re­mem­bered the peo­ple of Gaza “ex­posed for weeks to rain, wind and cold” and said the world’s many con­flicts can on­ly be si­lenced through di­a­logue.

Leo led the Christ­mas Day Mass from the cen­tral al­tar be­neath the balustrade of St. Pe­ter’s Basil­i­ca, adorned with flo­ral gar­lands and clus­ters of red poin­set­tias. White flow­ers were set at the feet of a stat­ue of Mary, moth­er of Je­sus, whose birth is cel­e­brat­ed on Christ­mas Day.

Re­call­ing that God was made flesh through Je­sus’s birth in a manger in Beth­le­hem, Leo likened God’s word to “a frag­ile tent among us.”

“How then can we not think of the tents in Gaza, ex­posed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those so many oth­er refugees and dis­placed per­sons on every con­ti­nent, or of the makeshift shel­ters of thou­sands of home­less peo­ple in our own cities,’’ Leo said.

The pon­tiff al­so re­called the fragili­ty of “de­fense­less pop­u­la­tions, tried by so many wars,’’ and of “young peo­ple forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the sense­less­ness of what is asked of them, and the false­hoods that fill the pompous speech­es of those who send them to their deaths.’’

Leo un­der­lined that peace could emerge on­ly through di­a­logue.

“There will be peace when our mono­logues are in­ter­rupt­ed and, en­riched by lis­ten­ing, we fall to our knees be­fore the hu­man­i­ty of the oth­er,” he said.

Thou­sands of peo­ple packed the Basil­i­ca for the pope’s first Christ­mas Day Mass, hold­ing aloft their smart­phones to cap­ture im­ages of the open­ing pro­ces­sion.

Leo will lat­er de­liv­er the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas mes­sage from a log­gia over­look­ing St. Pe­ter’s Square, where the faith­ful were gath­er­ing be­neath a steady rain. The “Ur­bi et Or­bi’’ bless­ing — Latin for “to the City and the World” — serves as a sum­ma­ry of the woes fac­ing the world this year.

This Christ­mas sea­son marks the wind­ing down of the Holy Year cel­e­bra­tions, which will close on Jan. 6, the Catholic Epiphany hol­i­day mark­ing the vis­it of the three wise men to the ba­by Je­sus in Beth­le­hem. —VAT­I­CAN CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by SIL­VIA STEL­LAC­CI and COLLEEN BAR­RY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Colleen Bar­ry re­port­ed from Mi­lan.