Westminster archbishop issues statement condemning Israel’s plan to take over Gaza City

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 11, 2025 / 16:32 pm (CNA).

Archbishop of Westminster in England and Wales Cardinal Vincent Nichols has issued a statement condemning Israel’s plans to take over Gaza City.

The statement came after Israel’s security cabinet approved a plan on Aug. 8 to take control of Gaza City and expand military operations.

Israel’s five-step plan includes disarming Hamas, releasing all remaining living and deceased hostages, demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, establishing temporary Israeli control over the enclave, and eventually replacing Hamas with a friendly Arab civil administration.

“Today, and in these days, I weep for the people of Gaza as they face not just a continuation of their immense suffering but an escalation in their hardship and desperation,” Nichols said in the Aug. 8 statement.

“To increase the destruction of Gaza City and then the rest of its territory, in order to defeat a terrorist organization and movement, is a development that is rightly being condemned around the world,” he added.

“There must be a better way,” said Nichols, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, calling for an alternative strategy “that does not heap yet further suffering and misery on so many people who are not combatants but defenseless in face of the perpetrators of violence in their midst.”

“Already too much innocent blood has been shed; too many lives destroyed; too much hunger and starvation,” he continued. “This war must be ended not increased.”

Nichols expressed solidarity with the faithful in Gaza as well as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, whose “consistent appeals for peace,” aid delivery, and support of Holy Family Parish in Gaza City, he said, should “evoke from us all our practical help and our prayers.”

The archbishop of Westminster further invoked the prayers of Our Lady of Gaza and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Jewish convert to the Catholic faith whose feast day was Aug. 9.

The latest developments come just under a month after an Israeli strike “mistakenly” hit Gaza’s only Catholic Church in Gaza City, resulting in three deaths and 15 injuries.

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), called for peace and an “immediate ceasefire” following the strike, stating: “With the Holy Father, the Catholic bishops of the United States are deeply saddened to learn about the deaths and injuries at Holy Family Church in Gaza caused by a military strike.”

USCCB Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop Abdallah Elias Zaidan, has also called for an end to the war and the “immediate expansion of humanitarian assistance through all channels in Gaza.”

On Monday, five Al Jazeera journalists and a freelance journalist were targeted and killed by Israel Defense Forces in a press tent outside Al Shifa Hospital in eastern Gaza City, according to Reuters. Israel claimed one of the journalists, Anas al-Sharif, was a Hamas operative, though Al Jazeera denied this. The airstrike was widely condemned by journalists, human rights groups, and the U.N.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265895/westminster-archbishop-issues-statement-condemning-israels-plan-to-take-over-gaza-city