Up to 26 people were killed with several hundred more wounded in a missile attack “right next to and part of the Greek Orthodox Church” in Gaza, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told a conference in Dublin on Friday.
He was speaking via video link from St George’s Anglican Cathedral in East Jerusalem following reports that on Thursday night there has been an Israeli air strike on the Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius in Gaza where hundreds of displaced Palestinians were sheltering. Built in about 1150, it is the oldest church still in use in Gaza. An estimated 1,000 Christians live in Gaza, most of whom are Greek Orthodox.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed its “strongest condemnation” of the air strike. “Targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli air strikes on residential areas over the past 13 days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored,” it said.
Israeli military said it had hit a command and control centre there which was involved in launching rockets towards Israel, but that the strike was under review.
Archbishop Welby told the Church of Ireland conference, which he had been due to address in person, that he met the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III, and the Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, earlier on Friday morning to discuss the situation.
He and Patriarch Theophilus “went down to the Holy Sepulchre [church] which was almost empty, and we prayed together”. The Patriarch, he recalled, said “people seem to find peace here”.
Many of those injured at the Church in Gaza were now being treated in the Anglican-run Al-Ahli Hospital, Archbishop Welby said. At least 471 people were killed in a deadly explosion at the hospital last Tuesday with more than 300 wounded. Palestinian officials and several Arab leaders have accused Israel of hitting the hospital in a missile strike amid the country’s ongoing bombing of Gaza. The Israeli military have blamed the blast on a failed rocket attack on Israel by a Palestinian militant group.
“Staff there had torn down ceilings that were about to fall down, cleaned up, and [it] is receiving casualties from that latest bomb,” said Archbishop Welby.
Explaining his absence from the MindMatters conference on mental health in Dublin, he said that, following the blast at the hospital last Tuesday, “it was inevitable that we needed to show solidarity by going to Israel/Palestine”. As well as Christian leaders, he would be meeting “a number of other people, as well as some Jewish leaders” in the coming days “to show sympathy and to sit in sorrow”.
Earlier, opening the MindMatters conference, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin and Glendalough Michael Jackson said the dioceses had been “supporting the hospital in Gaza for some years now and some of us have had the opportunity to be, not only in Jerusalem and the West Bank, but also in Gaza, to see the life and the conditions, the human response and the spirit of resilience that people have shown.”
In 2016 Archbishop Jackson concluded an accord with the then Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, Suheil Dawani, whose diocese runs the hospital in Gaza, which provides medical care for “all people, regardless of their faith or ethnicity.” The accord followed efforts in Dublin which raised €200,000 for the refurbishment of the hospital’s on – call facilities and for solar panels there.
Earlier on Tuesday last, before the hospital blast, the Church of Ireland had announced a further donation of €10,000 to help the Anglican diocese of Jerusalem run the hospital. That diocese includes 7,000 Anglicans in 28 congregations which worship in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan and runs more than 30 institutions, including hospitals, schools, clinics, rehabilitation centres, guest houses, and retirement homes.
Following Tuesday’s explosion, Archbishop Jackson urged “all people who have a voice in the political arena to raise it now on behalf of all who are living in terror, grief, trauma and facing death”.
In his address from Jerusalem to Friday’s Dublin conference, Archbishop Welby said “what we are seeing is a country, several countries, coming under trauma” with no doubt that this would “show itself in the future, in the children whose earliest memories will be of the pain and wounds, of the loss of siblings and parents.” It was why he felt “what you are doing so helpfully in MindMatters is to open up the way to talking better about this,” because everywhere there were “stilll those who struggle to talk about [the trauma]“.
