In First Christmas Homily, Pope Leo Cites Gaza’s Tents and Urges Ukraine Talks

Pope Leo XIV used his first Christmas homily to condemn the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, in what NBC News called an unusually direct appeal for a normally spiritual service, CBS News and NBC News reported.

The pope spoke of the “rubble and open wounds” left by war. He said God had “pitched his fragile tent” among people and asked: “How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?” The United Nations has said an estimated 1.3 million people there need shelter assistance and warned of a growing risk of hypothermia, CBS News reported.

About 26,000 people attended in St. Peter’s Square, CBS News reported, where Leo urged Russia and Ukraine to find the “courage to engage in sincere, direct and respectful dialogue” to end their nearly four-year war. He also called for “solidarity with and acceptance of those in need” in Europe, which CBS News read as a possible reference to growing anti-immigration sentiment on the continent. NBC News reported that he lamented the situation of migrants and refugees who “traverse the American continent.”

Leo, born in Chicago as Robert Prevost, is the first U.S. pope. NBC News said he was elected in May to succeed Pope Francis and has a quieter, more diplomatic style that usually avoids political references in sermons. He has made care for immigrants a theme of his early papacy and has criticized the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, NBC News reported, though he did not mention President Donald Trump on Thursday. In his Christmas Eve sermon he said that refusing to help the poor and strangers amounts to rejecting God himself.

The pope has spoken often about Gaza. He met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican last month, and a Vatican statement said the two agreed on “the urgent need to provide assistance to the civilian population in Gaza” and on pursuing a two-state solution, CBS News reported. Leo has said that any lasting solution must include a Palestinian state, according to NBC News.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in October, but humanitarian agencies say too little aid is reaching Gaza, where nearly the entire population is displaced, NBC News reported. In Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, the Christian community held its first festive Christmas in more than two years, CBS News said, as the city emerged from the shadow of the Gaza war.