Cardinal Pizzaballa: Church in Jerusalem called to help heal ‘deep wounds’ of war

JERUSALEM (LifeSiteNews) — In a substantial new pastoral letter addressed to the Latin Patriarchate’s diverse flock across Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Cyprus, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa has offered the local Catholic Church a profound spiritual and pastoral roadmap for living its vocation amid the ongoing and devastating violence which has sharply escalated in the Holy Land since October 2023.

Titled “They returned to Jerusalem with great joy”: A proposal for living the vocation of the Church in the Holy Land, the roughly 37-page document is explicitly not a political statement or a series of immediate policy prescriptions. Instead, it is “offered as one to be read slowly, as a tool for discernment and the promotion of conversation and reflection within our ecclesial contexts, our communities, monasteries, and families.”

Cardinal Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since 2020, frames the letter as the fruit of years of pastoral visits and prayerful reflection.

“The dramatic times we are living in have obligated us all to engage more assiduously in serving the poor, denouncing injustice, being present in our community, and, above all, in praying and listening to the Word of God,” he writes.

Routine statements of condemnation, while necessary, are no longer sufficient. “Our shared suffering in these times … does not allow us to limit ourselves to sugar-coated, abstract words – words that lack credibility.”

With the ongoing Israeli occupation, and aggressions against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank continuing, this “conflict is an integral part of the life of our Church, as it is of our daily existence.” And, unfortunately, “it has become part of the culture of this Land,” the Franciscan cardinal lamented.

Therefore, what the Church needs now is a clearer Christian witness: a distinctive way of being present in conflict that testifies to the Gospel rather than mirroring the world’s divisions, he proposed.

Pizzaballa’s letter is divided into three distinct parts: an unflinching reading of the present reality, a biblical vision drawn from the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation, and concrete pastoral proposals for how the Church can embody that vision today.

The hard reality of military violence and the ‘deep wounds’ it has produced

In the first section, “Reading the reality: considering the present,” Patriarch Pizzaballa describes the events since October 2023 as a “watershed” that “brought one era to a close and opened another, doing so in the worst possible way.”

“For the Palestinians, these events represent yet another dramatic phase in a long history of humiliation and displacement,” he wrote. “For the Israelis, on the other hand, these events represent something unprecedented, a violence that has brought back the horrors that occurred in Europe eighty years ago.”

Yet while the cardinal refuses to equate sufferings or engage in victimhood competitions, he observes:

There is a difference between those who exercise power and those who suffer under it, between those who govern and those who are governed, between those who possess weapons and those who are threatened by them, between those who occupy and those who are occupied. Responsibilities are different. Recognizing this difference is an act of respect for justice and truth.

He goes on further, observing a broader global and regional crisis: the violent rejection of multilateralism, the smug dismissal of international law, and a growing reliance on force and deterrence.

“War has become the object of an idolatrous cult: we no longer sit down at table to avoid conflict, but rather consider war a possible, or even inevitable, outcome,” he mourned. “Civilians are no longer simply considered collateral damage, rather this damage is blamed on the enemy’s failure to surrender, or they are seen as instruments used to achieve the goals of war. War serves as an end in itself.”

Additionally, new technologies, including artificial intelligence in warfare, raise fresh ethical questions. “We are entering a phase in which algorithms select targets, making choices that until recently were exclusively human,” the cardinal said. “What happens when a machine decides who lives and who dies? Where is there still human responsibility? These are new questions, for which we still have no answers, but which we can no longer afford to ignore.”

The war has additionally produced “deep wounds”: pervasive pain, dehumanization of the other, “toxic memory” that weaponizes history, and a fragmentation of society into isolated enclaves and echo chambers.

Words once held in common—“dialogue,” “coexistence,” “common good”—have lost credibility. Interreligious dialogue, crucial to this region, has been strained, with sacred sites becoming flashpoints of conflict and Scripture itself being sometimes misused to foment hostility.

“Sacred texts are invoked to justify violence, occupation, and terrorism,” Pizzaballa condemned. “I believe this abuse of God’s name is the gravest sin of our time.”

READ: Cardinal Pizzaballa rebukes Hegseth for the ‘gravest sin’ of invoking God as blessing war

Conflict ‘the very place’ the Church is called to ‘carry out its specific mission’

Within the Christian community, the impacts are significant, including economic hardship due to the absence of pilgrims, accelerated emigration, young people choosing not to marry or young families having fewer children, along with mistrust toward political and civil institutions.

Yet, the cardinal proposes, for the Christian this “conflict is not something to be overcome, but rather the very place in which our Church is called to carry out its specific mission as a community of believers in Christ.”

“In this Land where the contours of identity are so fiercely defended, our Christian existence must become a witness to a particular style of living, even amidst conflict.”

And thus, Christians in the Holy Land are invited to witness to, and propose, an alternative style of life marked by holiness and charity, precisely within this wounded context.

Church in Jerusalem called to redeem ‘consequences of conflict’ for ‘the whole world’

The heart of the letter lies in its second part, where Cardinal Pizzaballa turns to Sacred Scripture for orientation. He anchors the Church’s vocation in the image of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven in the Book of Revelation (chapters 21–22).

This is no earthly city built by human effort, but is rather a gift from God—open, radiant, and healed.

“Jerusalem – as we have seen – always has its doors open and exists to the extent that it is welcoming,” he writes. “Its gates are never shut. There is no temple because God Himself dwells among the people. The Lamb (Jesus Christ) is its lamp, and “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.”

This biblical icon stands in stark contrast to the closed, fearful, possessive Jerusalem of current experience.

And thus, as the earthly Jerusalem “stands as a symbolic microcosm at the intersection of civilizations, religions, and ethnicities,” its mission is “to become the image and mirror of the heavenly Jerusalem, ‘a prophecy and promise of that universal reconciliation and peace which God desires for the whole human family’ (Benedict XVI).”

“The heart of the world is in Jerusalem, as witnessed by the millions of pilgrims who come from all over to the Holy City. Pilgrims are part of the life of the city,” the cardinal wrote. “Without them, without this link to the world, the city is incomplete, and we unfortunately see this very clearly in these months marked by their absence.”

“What is experienced in Jerusalem involves the lives of billions of believers around the world,” he affirmed. And thus, “Jerusalem belongs to no one exclusively; it belongs to everyone because it is not the spoils of war, but a gift, a common reference point, a heritage of humanity.”

For these reasons, “(t)he international community should guarantee Jerusalem’s universal mission, reminding everyone that what happens within its walls affects the hearts of billions of believers and the entire human family,” he said.

And insofar as the New Jerusalem is called to serve the “healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2), “(r)edeeming the consequences of conflict – hatred, fear, ‘toxic memory’ – is the specific and sublime task of the Jerusalem Church for the whole world,” Pizzaballa proclaimed.

Practical implementation in families, parishes, schools, hospitals

From this vision flows the third and most practical section: pastoral implications for daily Church life. Cardinal Pizzaballa translates the heavenly Jerusalem into concrete calls for parishes, families, schools, hospitals, religious communities, the elderly, and youth.

The patriarch first stresses the primacy of liturgy and prayer as the Church’s “beating heart.” Prayer is not a mere means to achieve peace or solutions, but a loving encounter with God that transforms our vision and sustains the community. He encourages recourse to the Liturgy of the Hours, lectio divina, Eucharistic adoration, and the sacrament of confession, along with attentive pastoral care of families, so that Christ may continue to shape and heal His Church amid darkness.

Continuing, the cardinal asserts that “our schools must become the places where the vision we have outlined in this Letter – the Jerusalem of open doors, the redemption of memory, the rejection of violence – takes concrete form in educational method and daily lifestyle. This is where a decisive part of the future of this planet is played out.”

Parishes must become centers of encounter and formation in trust, while families are to educate children to avoid hate speech and fake news. “In families, let us educate our children not to use hateful words, not to share fake news, and to distinguish between legitimate criticism and insults.”

Social institutions—hospitals and charitable works—are described as leaves “for the healing of the nations,” offering silent but powerful witness through service across religious and ethnic divides.

Young people are summoned as prophets and builders of the future; the elderly as living memory to be cherished. Priests and religious are to be sentinels of hope and points of unity.

The letter also devotes special attention to ecumenism and interreligious dialogue, acknowledging difficulties yet insisting these are not optional extras but constitutive of the Church’s vocation in this land, due especially to a predominance of mixed marriages.

Rejection of violence, choice of trust, practice of radical welcome

Three overarching attitudes are offered as essential by the Latin Patriarch. First, the total rejection of violence: “We reject any complicity with the culture of violence. Our fidelity is to the Lamb, not to the logic of power. Wherever it comes from, whatever face it takes violence is never the path of the Gospel.”

Second, the courageous choice of trust over paralyzing skepticism: “Skepticism, when it becomes a permanent attitude, ends up paralyzing us. We are called to respond to this skepticism with trust … Christian trust is born of faith and is a choice that runs counter to the grain. It is the certainty that God has not abandoned history to chaos and remains close to those who suffer, those who are persecuted, those who are rejected. It is the conviction that a life spent, given for love, is never lost.”

Third, the practice of radical welcome: “May our communities be places where everyone – regardless of origin, language, culture, or faith – can feel welcome, listened to, and loved. This is not to lose our identity, but to live it in its truest form: that of love that excludes no one.”

‘Mary, Queen of Palestine and of all the Holy Land,’ invoked for assistance

The letter concludes on a note of Easter realism. Cardinal Pizzaballa acknowledges that readers may feel overwhelmed: “The risk is feeling overwhelmed and asking, ‘How can we accomplish all of this?’ The answer is simple: we cannot. At least, not alone. But we are not alone,” because Jesus Christ is present with His Church.

Pizzaballa recalls the disciples who, after the Ascension, “returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:52). “They had been shocked, they had been afraid, they had doubted. Yet, in the end, they returned full of joy.”

“We, too, desire to return to our daily Jerusalem … with that same joy. Not a naïve joy that ignores hardships. But an Easter joy, that knows that light conquers darkness, that life defeats death, that love disarms hatred,” he writes.

“Let us return to Jerusalem with joy. Let us return to our lives with passion. Let us carry in our hearts God’s dream for God’s City, and let us allow that dream to become, step by step, day by day, our very lives.”

“May Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, Queen of Palestine and of all the Holy Land, Patroness of our Diocese, accompany us on this journey,” he concluded.

Cardinal Pizzaballa’s full letter dated April 25, 2026 (Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist), is available on the Latin Patriarchate website here, including in PDF format.

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