Israeli officials fear the pope’s vocal criticisms and symbolic gestures - such as this year’s nativity scene in St Peter’s Square featuring baby Jesus resting on a Palestinian keffiyeh - may influence global public opinion.
Created by Bethlehem artists Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, the nativity scene prominently features Palestinian materials, including olive wood, a symbol of Palestinian resilience.
During its unveiling, Pope Francis condemned the global arms industry for profiting from human suffering and reiterated his call for an end to all wars, urging the faithful to remember those suffering in the holy land.
The display, praised by many as a message of solidarity and peace, drew backlash from Israel’s supporters, who accused the Vatican of promoting a pro-Palestinian agenda.
Why do Israelis (well most of them) care what an old Catholic has to say?
The logic chain of the Netanyahu camp is: Keep Netanyahu out of jail -by-> Keeping him in power -by-> Creating a problem and showing he is solving it -by-> Stirring up regional instability and dragging the US into it -by-> Being belligerent and genociding as hard as possible.
Now for this to work, they need to maintain conflict while maintaining the support from the US. About 70% of the US identify as some form of Christian… and some significant percentage of them support Israel in their genocide because they believe it will bring the second coming of Jesus. But if the about 20% of Americans who identify as Catholic actually flip to being anti-genocide because their leader advocates for that, that is under threat - it potentially becomes close to a majority who are anti-genocide, and makes ongoing support from the US less likely.
I’m with you up until you start talking specifically about catholics. I don’t have stats on hand but I believe the venn diagram of “people who believe in forcing Jesus to come back with some bullshit in the holy land” and “catholics” has very little overlap.
Here in the bible belt I’ve known and met many flavors of protestant who don’t even think of catholics as christians.
Many Catholics don’t particularly think of themselves as Christians either, they say “catholic” when asked about their religion, while protestants of all sorts tend to just say Christian.
They say Catholic because that is their religion, just like someone would say Baptist. I assure you they think of themselves as Christians.
Ask any Catholic, “Are you a Christian?” They will answer yes every single time.