Unexpected casualties

The visit of Pope Leo XIV to Africa was never meant to be a quiet pastoral tour. It unfolded as a moral intervention—one that placed interreligious respect, human dignity, and the rejection of violence at the centre of global attention.

From the outset, the Holy Father’s message was clear: religion, when authentically lived, is not a cause of division but a force for peace.

Speaking to interreligious initiatives in Africa, he pointed to a lived reality too often ignored by a conflict-driven world: “It is possible to live and work together in peace and harmony, despite cultural and religious differences.”

This is the foundation of peace—not uniformity, but mutual recognition.

And yet that foundation is cracking.

In the ongoing Israel–Hamas War, the Christian presence in Gaza—one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world—is facing what can only be described as collapse. Reports from early 2025 indicated that roughly 75 per cent of Christian-owned homes in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. Schools and cultural centres have not been spared. What is being eroded is not only a population, but a patrimony.

And then there are the moments that cut deeper still. A video of a soldier from the Israel Defence Forces desecrating a crucifix in Lebanon carries a symbolic violence that exceeds the physical act.

The crucifix is the centre of Christian identity—the image of suffering transformed into redemption. To destroy it is not merely to offend; it is to disregard the sacred itself.

The statue has since been replaced by Italian soldiers of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon. But there are reports of continued deliberate targeting of Catholic iconography and desecration of Christian churches.

Noteworthy, in a different part of the world, the European Parliament passed a resolution in January 2026 officially recognising ‘Christianophobia’ in the face of growing anti-Christian hate crimes across Europe. The text of the resolution highlighted that Christianity remains, “the most persecuted religion in the world”.

What is at stake?

During his Africa visit, the Pope rejected the misuse of religion in conflict, insisting that violence cannot be cloaked in divine justification: “God does not want this.”

His proclaiming the Gospel value of peace led to verbal attacks by the President of the United States, supported by his Vice President, a Catholic convert, and some Evangelical pastors in the US. Heartening, however, was the overwhelming global support for the Pope across political and religious divides.

What is at stake is not only the fate of Christians in Gaza, or in West Bank, or in Lebanon—where harassment, displacement, and uncertainty continue to grow. It is the integrity of religion itself.

If religion ceases to command respect—if sacred symbols can be desecrated, places of worship destroyed, and communities erased without consequence—then religion is no longer a force for peace. It becomes, instead, another casualty of war.

The suffering of Christians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon must also be named. The destruction of churches must be condemned. The desecration of sacred symbols must be rejected without qualification. Not because Christians are uniquely important—but because no community should be treated as expendable, faith community or otherwise.

The question is whether the rest of the world is willing to listen. Because if it does not, the lesson will be clear and devastating: that even the oldest communities can disappear, not with a single blow, but through a slow, indifferent erosion.

And that would not only be a political failure. It would be a moral one.