Pope Leo appeals for Gaza ceasefire, laments deaths of children
VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo appealed on Wednesday for a ceasefire in Gaza, and called on Israel and Hamas militants to 'completely respect' international humanitarian law.'In the Gaza Strip, the intense cries are reaching Heaven more and more from mothers and fathers who hold tightly to the bodies of their dead children,' the pontiff said during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.'To those responsible, I renew my appeal: stop the fighting,' said the pope. 'Liberate all the hostages. Completely respect humanitarian law.'Leo, elected on May 8 to replace the late Pope Francis, also appealed for an end to the war in Ukraine.
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Arab News
24 minutes ago
- Arab News
PM Sharif urges nation to remember Palestinians as Pakistan marks Eid Al-Adha
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday urged the nation to remember the people of Palestine suffering 'ruthless' occupation at the hands of Israel, state-run media reported, as millions of Pakistanis celebrated Eid Al-Adha. Eid Al-Adha is one of the two most important festivals of the Islamic calendar. Muslims mark the Eid Al-Adha holiday by slaughtering animals such as sheep and goats, and the meat is shared among family and friends and donated to the poor. The day began with Sharif and senior officials across the country offering Eid Al-Adha prayers in mosques and praying for Pakistan's progress and prosperity. 'He [Sharif] said today, we must especially remember our Palestinian brothers and sisters who are enduring ruthless and inhumane oppression and hunger,' state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported. The Pakistani premier's message comes as the Israeli military presses on with its intensified military campaign in Gaza, issuing an evacuation order for residents of parts of the city on Friday as the Middle East celebrated Eid Al-Adha. The Pakistani prime minister also urged the masses to remember the people in Indian-administered Kashmir, saying that they were involved in a 'just and courageous' struggle for their right to self-determination for decades. In his message to the nation, President Asif Ali Zardari said there was a pressing need to support the underprivileged and marginalized segments of our society. 'Asif Ali Zardari said as a nation, we must support each other, share in each other's sorrows, and work together to build a prosperous and great Pakistan,' Radio Pakistan reported. Pakistan Army's military leadership paid tribute to the 'unwavering resilience' of the Pakistani nation, recognizing the sacrifices of the armed forces, law enforcement agencies, and citizens who continue to uphold the security of the country. 'The Pakistan Armed Forces stand resolutely with the people, united in purpose and steadfast in their sacred duty to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country,' the Inter-Services Public Relations, the military's media wing, said.
Arab News
27 minutes ago
- Arab News
Pope Leo XIV faces funding challenges for cash-strapped Vatican
VATICAN CITY: The world's smallest country has a big budget problem. The Vatican doesn't tax its residents or issue bonds. It primarily finances the Catholic Church's central government through donations that have been plunging, ticket sales for the Vatican Museums, as well as income from investments and an underperforming real estate portfolio. The last year the Holy See published a consolidated budget, in 2022, it projected €770 million ($878 million), with the bulk paying for embassies around the world and Vatican media operations. In recent years, it hasn't been able to cover costs. That leaves Pope Leo XIV facing challenges to drum up the funds needed to pull his city-state out of the red. Withering donations Anyone can donate money to the Vatican, but the regular sources come in two main forms. Canon law requires bishops around the world to pay an annual fee, with amounts varying and at bishops' discretion 'according to the resources of their dioceses.' US bishops contributed over one-third of the $22 million (€19.3 million) collected annually under the provision from 2021-2023, according to Vatican data. The other main source of annual donations is more well-known to ordinary Catholics: Peter's Pence, a special collection usually taken on the last Sunday of June. From 2021-2023, individual Catholics in the US gave an average $27 million (€23.7 million) to Peter's Pence, more than half the global total. American generosity hasn't prevented overall Peter's Pence contributions from cratering. After hitting a high of $101 million (€88.6 million) in 2006, contributions hovered around $75 million (€66.8 million) during the 2010's then tanked to $47 million (€41.2 million) during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches were closed. Donations remained low in the following years, amid revelations of the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property, a former Harrod's warehouse that it hoped to develop into luxury apartments. The scandal and ensuing trial confirmed that the vast majority of Peter's Pence contributions had funded the Holy See's budgetary shortfalls, not papal charity initiatives as many parishioners had been led to believe. Peter's Pence donations rose slightly in 2023 and Vatican officials expect more growth going forward, in part because there has traditionally been a bump immediately after papal elections. New donors The Vatican bank and the city state's governorate, which controls the museums, also make annual contributions to the pope. As recently as a decade ago, the bank gave the pope around €55 million ($62.7 million) a year to help with the budget. But the amounts have dwindled; the bank gave nothing specifically to the pope in 2023, despite registering a net profit of €30 million ($34.2 million), according to its financial statements. The governorate's giving has likewise dropped off. Some Vatican officials ask how the Holy See can credibly ask donors to be more generous when its own institutions are holding back. Leo will need to attract donations from outside the US, no small task given the different culture of philanthropy, said the Rev. Robert Gahl, director of the Church Management Program at Catholic University of America's business school. He noted that in Europe there is much less of a tradition (and tax advantage) of individual philanthropy, with corporations and government entities doing most of the donating or allocating designated tax dollars. Even more important is leaving behind the 'mendicant mentality' of fundraising to address a particular problem, and instead encouraging Catholics to invest in the church as a project, he said. Speaking right after Leo's installation ceremony in St. Peter's Square, which drew around 200,000 people, Gahl asked: 'Don't you think there were a lot of people there that would have loved to contribute to that and to the pontificate?' In the US, donation baskets are passed around at every Sunday Mass. Not so at the Vatican. Untapped real estate The Vatican has 4,249 properties in Italy and 1,200 more in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland. Only about one-fifth are rented at fair market value, according to the annual report from the APSA patrimony office, which manages them. Some 70 percent generate no income because they house Vatican or other church offices; the remaining 10 percent are rented at reduced rents to Vatican employees. In 2023, these properties only generated €35 million euros ($39.9) in profit. Financial analysts have long identified such undervalued real estate as a source of potential revenue. But Ward Fitzgerald, the president of the US-based Papal Foundation, which finances papal charities, said the Vatican should also be willing to sell properties, especially those too expensive to maintain. Many bishops are wrestling with similar downsizing questions as the number of church-going Catholics in parts of the US and Europe shrinks and once-full churches stand empty. Toward that end, the Vatican recently sold the property housing its embassy in Tokyo's high-end Sanbancho neighborhood, near the Imperial Palace, to a developer building a 13-story apartment complex, according to the Kensetsu News trade journal. Yet there has long been institutional reluctance to part with even money-losing properties. Witness the Vatican announcement in 2021 that the cash-strapped Fatebenefratelli Catholic hospital in Rome, run by a religious order, would not be sold. Pope Francis simultaneously created a Vatican fundraising foundation to keep it and other Catholic hospitals afloat. 'They have to come to grips with the fact that they own so much real estate that is not serving the mission of the church,' said Fitzgerald, who built a career in real estate private equity.
Al Arabiya
5 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Israel admits to supporting anti-Hamas armed group in Gaza
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it. Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab. The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a 'criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks.' Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu's direction, was 'giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons.' 'What did Liberman leak? That security sources activated a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas? What is bad about that?' Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday. 'It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.' Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt's Sinai peninsula. Some of the tribe's members, he said, were involved in 'all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that.' Army spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin on Friday confirmed the military supported arming local militias in Gaza but remained tight-lipped on the details. 'I can say that we are operating in various ways against Hamas governance,' Defrin said during a televised press conference when questioned on the subject, without elaborating further. 'Gangster' Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli 'collaborator and a gangster.' 'It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter' from army operations, Milshtein said. He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago. The ECFR said Abu Shabab was 'reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group's attacks on UN aid convoys.' Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza. Hamas said the group had 'chosen betrayal and theft as their path' and called on civilians to oppose them. Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of 'clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of' Palestinians. The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab's group calls itself, said on Facebook it had 'never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation.' 'Our weapons are simple, outdated and came through the support of our own people,' it added. Milshtein called Israel's decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab 'a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy.' 'I really hope it will not end with catastrophe,' he said.
