Fr. Gabriel Romanelli, pastor of the only Catholic Church of Gaza, bombed on Thursday, July 17, offers a deep reflection on suffering and death, especially now in the framework of the war between Israel and Hamas.
In a video posted on his YouTube channel on July 21, entitled “Die yes! Suffer No!”, The Argentine priest remembers the book He was immolated from the priests of P. Manuel Díaz Martínez, a presbyter of the twentieth century who talks about what priestly love is, whose prologue is written by Fr. Santiago Martín, who states that “the Lord not only agreed to die, but agreed to suffer.”
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Father Romanelli points out that the love of the priest “is a love like that of Christ, it is not a masochistic love, but that in today’s world is not understood by reigning hedonism, it cannot be understood. It is not understood that someone may be willing to suffer and want to suffer when God asks.”
“We, as a priest, as a religious, many times I told Christ that I was willing to die. I live the constitutions, the spiritual life, which are reflected in all the documents of my beloved congregation of the embodied verb (Ive), where he speaks of the sacrifice that one personally does.”
However, the priest continued, “many times it happens to us, and that can happen to us. It would be easier to be willing to die than not willing to suffer.”
“And yet, our Lord Jesus Christ told us that suffering is what prepares the supreme act of delivery, death,” said the priest, who said that this can happen to anyone, priest or secular, already “either because of the bloody sacrifice of a martyrdom of blood or by the uncertain sacrifice” in everyday life in a world hostile to Christianity.
After pointing out that as a missionary in Gaza he wants to serve Christ, recognizing himself sinner, Fr. Romanelli shares that he has seen “death, many people have seen die and one can get used to. Death will come and suffering is present.”
That, he said, does not “take away the evil of those who do evil and for whom you have to pray a lot as Jesus did on the cross, as he did many times and how he sent us to forgive everyone.”
“That is why each one in his vocation that is willing to suffer, not only to die. Die and suffer and all this loving with great charity, with great simplicity, with great joy paradoxically, until the day that the Lord asks us for whatever he wants,” he said.
The Argentine priest regretted that “the war unfortunately continues its course. There are everywhere. Only God wants, only God knows if he is going to stop or not. Hopefully stop, stop soon, to listen to the call of the Holy Father, of Pope León who requested an immediate cessation of immediate fire at the end of the war.”
“The bombs do not distinguish, do not distinguish. The war does not discern, does not distinguish, kill one and the other and suffer one and the other. That is why the suffering of the population is extreme. Let’s continue asking for the end of this war. I thank you once again to all of you the closeness, prayer, help and God bless you from Gaza,” he concluded.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.