France condemns 'unacceptable' bombing of church under its 'historic protection'
"I expressed to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem the emotion and solidarity of our country. These attacks are intolerable; it is time for the carnage in Gaza to stop," the minister wrote. "France protects Catholic religious communities in Israel and Palestine. This role is the legacy of a long history that goes back to the capitulations signed by Francis I with Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1535," the Foreign Affairs Ministry recalled in a written response to a senator's question in 2014.
Since the 1920s, France has no longer had a "legal role in protecting Eastern Catholic Christians. However, the agreements signed between France and the Ottoman Empire at Mytilene in 1901 and Constantinople in 1913, which granted France protection over Catholic religious communities in the Holy Land, have been recognized by the Israeli and Palestinian authorities and are thus still in effect," according to the Ministry.
The Gaza Civil Defense and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced Thursday the death of two people in an Israeli airstrike on the only Catholic church in the Palestinian territory, which has been a refuge for this small community since the beginning of the war. Israel, at war with the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas since Oct. 7, 2023, said it "never targets" religious sites in the Gaza Strip and added that the circumstances in which the church was damaged were "under review."
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