Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice, a judge of the Vatican Supreme Court (nomen est omen) and colleague of Pope Leo XIV in the Curia for five years, compared what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza with what the Nazis did to the Jews. He spoke in an interview today with the daily La Stampa.
Cardinal Lojudice’s words are of an unprecedented severity. The impression is given that he has been chosen to represent the Pope’s thoughts, through a person best qualified from the standpoint not only of morality, but also of law.
Some people were shocked by the Pope Francis’ use of the term “genocide,” Lojudice said, “But in Gaza we are beyond madness. The most unbridled and illogical evil is at work. The killing of children queuing for a handful of rice cries out to God for justice.” The high Catholic prelate, who is also Archbishop of Siena and Montepulciano and member of the permanent council of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, said that “the die has been cast and any geopolitical justification has been nullified.” Because “in the face of the current escalation of atrocities, no one says anymore that it is right for Israel to defend itself. The massacre of the innocents cries out to heaven for vengeance. We can no longer hold back from denouncing it.”
According to Lojudice, Benjamin Netanyahu “will not stop because he is a tyrant pursuing a dark and bloody plan for power. Apart from Donald Trump, who is only interested in selling weapons, no one accepts his self-legitimization anymore. The other day, at the Cistercian abbey of San Galgano, Caritas organized a charity concert. At the end, a lady from the Jewish community came up to me, almost in tears, with an apologetic tone. I hugged her and replied that religious affiliation had nothing to do with it. How can someone who is guilty of such atrocities and has tens of thousands of victims on their conscience look at themselves in the mirror? There is nothing reasonable about carnage; it is evil that takes over and wipes out any sense of humanity.”
