The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem: I am ready to do anything for the release of the hostages

Rome, Oct 16 (EFE).- The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, explained today that he is willing to do anything, even to offer himself in an exchange, to free the hostages held by the Islamist group Hamas after the attack on October 7, although he acknowledged that the possibility of mediation is currently very difficult.

“Am I ready for an exchange? Anything, even if it can lead to freedom and bring those children home, there is no problem. For my part, absolute availability,” responded the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, in a press conference online with a group of journalists in Italy, about whether he is willing to offer himself for an exchange to free the children held hostage by the terrorist group.

Regarding the mediation offer from the Holy See, he confirmed that there has been “the availability to try to recover the hostages, at least part of them, this is what is being attempted,” but he acknowledged that “it is very difficult because to mediate there are “You have to have interlocutors. And right now you can’t talk to Hamas.”

He explained that the return of the hostages could be an element “to unblock the situation” and that “it must be tried by all means because it is a gesture that could make us rethink the development (of the crisis) or, on the contrary, it will be very difficult.” stop this.”

“We are ready for anything, we are prepared for anything that could restore calm to this escalation,” he added.

And he pointed out: “I want to be clear, there is no understanding of what Hamas has done, but we want to see if some mediation can be reached to try to get a hostage home. We are looking for a channel of communication.”

The highest representative of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land expressed his pain for a country, Israel, “that has changed radically” and in the face of “unjustifiable and incomprehensible barbarism” and his concern for what may happen in Gaza.

Pizzaballa described the situation of the nearly one thousand Christians in the Gaza Strip who live as refugees in ecclesiastical centers – about 500 in the Latin Church, 400 in the Greek Orthodox Church and another 300 in the Protestant center – and “that at the moment They are fine, there have been no deaths but they don’t know what to do.

“They are all in the northern part,” explains Pizzaballa, the most threatened by a possible offensive by Israel, and “they don’t know what to do, because they don’t know where to go, and moving is even more dangerous, but the supplies are starting to run out.” become scarce” and that is why everything is being done to “try to open humanitarian corridors so that essential goods enter the Strip.”

Pizzaballa acknowledged that they are “stunned” and “dismayed” by “so much hatred” and that there are now fears “that the ground operation, or whatever it is called, and that the humanitarian crisis will cause even more victims.”

And he added that the other fear is that this conflict will become a regional conflict, “encompassing not only Gaza or possibly the West Bank, but also Lebanon and then the Islamic world. The fears of regional expansion are real, and I am not saying this because say”.