A Church Against the Logic of War: Vatican Voices, Middle East Realities, and the Risk of a Vanishing Christianity

Mar 20, 2026 17:03

ZENIT Staff

Cardinal Parolin in the Italian Chamber of Deputies Photo: Vatican News

Holy Land•Justice and Peace•Persecuted Christians

Israeli Jewish army causes death of Catholic priest in Lebanon and displaces thousands of Catholics from southern Lebanon

Qlayaa is a predominantly Maronite Christian town of about 8,000 residents in southern Lebanon. Like several other villages in the region, it had received evacuation warnings from the Israeli military as fighting intensified between Israel and the Shiite militia Hezbollah.

Mar 11, 2026 17:36

ZENIT Staff

Analysis Opinion•Holy Land•Justice and Peace•Vatican Diplomacy

Vatican questions “preventive” war in Iran as Leo XIV intensifies diplomatic calls for peace

In an interview with Vatican media on March 4, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Holy See’s Secretary of State, offered one of the most detailed assessments yet of the crisis

Mar 08, 2026 07:10

Jorge Enrique Mújica

Holy Land•Justice and Peace

Settlers exploit war in Iran to commit new acts of violence in the West Bank

Two Palestinian brothers were shot dead in a raid in Qaryut, south of Nablus. New attacks and assaults also in the Christian village of Taybeh. Fr Bashar: not isolated incidents, but a ‘growing pattern of violence’ that raises “concerns”. Barriers and isolation, the West Bank increasingly similar to the Strip, victim of ‘state violence’.

Mar 04, 2026 09:33

ZENIT Staff

Holy Land•Local Church

Lebanon: more than 30,000 displaced by escalating violence

According to local staff of Aid to the Church in Need in Lebanon, more than ten powerful airstrikes struck Beirut’s southern suburbs at around 2:30 a.m. on Monday. Explosions were heard far beyond the capital, including in the Keserwan region. Additional strikes targeted southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley.

Mar 03, 2026 08:41

ZENIT Staff

Holy Land•Justice and Peace•Pope Leo XIV•Vatican Diplomacy

Pope Leo XIV, the US-Iran war, and a forceful call in a Middle East on the brink of the abyss

The reverberations are being felt most acutely by Christian minorities already living on fragile ground

Mar 02, 2026 09:06

Jorge Enrique Mújica

Pope Leo XIV calls the liturgy the “driving force of evangelization” and urges priests to respect liturgical texts and norms

The Pope’s General Audience, May 27, 2026, on Tradition and Reform in the Liturgy

Pope Leo XIV receives Spain’s atheist president amid a political crisis in the country he is about to visit

The approximately 45-minute private audience between Sánchez and the Pope unfolded against a turbulent domestic backdrop. On the same day, Spanish political debate was dominated by developments involving investigations linked to the Socialist Party and the legal scrutiny surrounding former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

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A Church Against the Logic of War: Vatican Voices, Middle East Realities, and the Risk of a Vanishing Christianity

Fr Sliman: As war affects daily life in Kuwait, the Church responds to the uncertainty

A Phone Call in Times of War: Pope Leo XIV Answers a Call from the President of Palestine

The Middle East on the Brink of Collapse: Another Call for Peace from the Pope, the Death of a Member of the Order of Malta in Lebanon, and Bombings at Shepherds’ Fields in Bethlehem

The last historic Christian village in the Holy Land, threatened with annexation by the Jewish state of Israel

This was the funeral of the Lebanese Catholic priest who died in Israeli army bombings

Lebanon requests diplomatic mediation from the Vatican to prevent Israel from attacking or displacing Catholic communities in the south of the country

Israeli Jewish army causes death of Catholic priest in Lebanon and displaces thousands of Catholics from southern Lebanon

Vatican questions “preventive” war in Iran as Leo XIV intensifies diplomatic calls for peace

Settlers exploit war in Iran to commit new acts of violence in the West Bank

Lebanon: more than 30,000 displaced by escalating violence

Pope Leo XIV, the US-Iran war, and a forceful call in a Middle East on the brink of the abyss