A global alliance of Catholic clerics, protesting what they claim is Israel’s genocide in Gaza, is linking Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis with what Palestinian activists call the Nakba, which they describe as the “forced removal of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their land” in 1948.
Altering biblical and contemporary historical narratives, the coalition seeks to advance Hamas’s narrative in an attempt to sway Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, into opposing U.S. military assistance for Israel.
The “Priests Against Genocide” initiative, led by Italian priests from the Xaverian Missionaries, has launched a petition that includes endorsements from a cardinal, eleven bishops, and more than 1,600 priests from fifty countries.
The coalition seeks to advance Hamas’s narrative in an attempt to sway Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, into opposing U.S. military assistance for Israel.
On September 22, 2025, over 100 priests from the movement demonstrated outside Italy’s Lower House of Parliament in Rome. Organizers chose the date to coincide with the eve of the United Nations General Assembly. The event also coincided with the anti-Israel strike called by several trade unions across Italy.
Clergy carried icons of an “Arab” Mary holding an emaciated infant Jesus in her arms, reflecting the claim that Israel was starving babies in Gaza to death by withholding food supplies, even though subsequent reports confirmed that Hamas was using images of children suffering from cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis to advance its propaganda.
The petition calls on Western political leaders to suspend “arms sales to those who commit crimes against civilians” and pledges prayers for “[t]he disarmament of the state of Israel to prevent further deaths of innocent people.”
Citing Pope Leo XIV’s first address after his election calling for a “disarmed and disarming peace,” the coalition says it will campaign to raise awareness in parishes, ecumenical and interreligious collaborations, and a national meeting in Rome.
The revisionist slogan “Christ died in Gaza” features at the top of the petition, echoing the discourse of so-called Palestinian liberation theology claiming Jesus was a Palestinian rather than a Jew.
The priests insist that their movement is not antisemitic and that they are “taking a stand against the genocide of the Palestinian people” not as a “partisan act” but “from the awareness of being ‘human beings’ and from the need to live our faith coherently.”
The priests insist that their movement is not antisemitic and that they are “taking a stand against the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
One of the most striking features of the petition is its linking the demand for “independent investigations” into the events of October 7, 2023, the Nakba, the “occupation and apartheid regime that the State of Israel has imposed in Palestine,” and “Israeli media propaganda aimed at tolerating, denying, or even justifying the ongoing genocide against Palestinians.”
The petition echoes the libel of the Nakba as used by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and fails to explain that it was a result of Israel defending herself from the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon (backed by Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya), who attacked the fledgling state just as Israel declared independence in 1948.
The petition does not demand an investigation into the expulsion of even more Jewish refugees from Arab countries in the same year. Iran later expelled 70,000 Jews following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Nick Donnelly, a popular Catholic English commentator, theologian, author, and deacon, blasted the petition: “This is clearly an attempt by Italian clergy to persuade Pope Leo that there is a groundswell supporting his pro-Gaza/anti-U.S.-Israel policy.”
“You’d think that the Catholic Church, especially Italian Catholic clergy, would be more sensitive about appearing to be antisemitic! After all, Italian Catholics imprisoned Jews in the first ghettos and Italian clergy facilitated the ratlines to help Nazis war criminals escape justice after WWII,” Donnelly told me.
“Where is the clergy’s petition protesting the genocide of Nigerian Christians at the hands of Islamists, or the petition protesting the genocide of Christians by Islamists in the Middle East? It makes one wonder why the Italian clergy are again so keen to side with the enemies of the Jewish people,” Donnelly said.
“It makes one wonder why the Italian clergy are again so keen to side with the enemies of the Jewish people.”
By “calling for the disarmament of Israel,” the clergy are, “whether they know it or not, calling for the genocide of Israel at the hands of Hamas and their backers in Iran,” he noted. “It’s a bizarre position for these Catholic clergy to take—making ill-founded accusations of genocide against Israel, while at the same time promoting the conditions that would guarantee the genocide of Israel.”
The American pope is a fierce critic of President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” policies. Some Vatican analysts believe he was elected as an ideological and geopolitical foil to Trump.
“Hardly any churchman has been more critical of the policies of this U.S. administration than Leo XIV,” commented Felix Neumann, deputy chairman of the Society of Catholic Journalists in Germany. “By electing this American as pope, the cardinals have sent a strong signal.
“Pope Leo XIV has the potential to do for Trump’s regime what the election of John Paul II did for Poland’s communist regime,” Neumann noted, alluding to the Polish pope’s “revolution of conscience” that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. The difference, however, is that while Pope John Paul II used moral clarity to side with the forces of democracy against a totalitarian ideology, “Priests Against Genocide” seeks to sway Leo XIV to do the opposite.
