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The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will be received by Pope Francis on December 12, 2024, the Holy See Press Office reported on December 10. While the 89-year-old statesman has already visited the Vatican regularly to meet Francis — and Benedict XVI before him — this will be his first visit since the Islamist attack on Israeli territory on October 7, 2023, which triggered the deadly war in Gaza.
This audience will mark the seventh meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Pope Francis. In addition to their meeting in 2014 during the apostolic journey to the Holy Land, the Palestinian president has already visited the Vatican five times since the election of the Argentine pontiff.
In particular, on January 14, 2017 he inaugurated a Palestinian embassy near the Holy See — which has recognized the State of Palestine since 2015 — and took part in the June 8, 2014, prayer for peace in the Vatican Gardens, alongside the (since deceased) Israeli president Shimon Peres.
Since the Palestinian leader's last visit in 2021, the situation in the Holy Land has deteriorated tragically. The Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, triggered a massive Israeli response in the Gaza Strip — where the Hamas Ministry of Health reports over 44,00 casualties — and the conflagration of the entire Middle East region.
Mahmoud Abbas and Pope Francis spoke by telephone on November 2, 2023, to discuss the situation. On the following November 22, Fr. Ibrahim Faltas, vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, handed the Pontiff a letter from the Palestinian president.
“They’re friends. The pope and the president like each other; they call each other and write to each other,” the Franciscan told Vatican media at the time.
Controversy surrounding a Palestinian nativity scene at the Vatican
Mahmoud Abbas's visit comes at a time when controversy has arisen over the Nativity scene in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall (where the Pope holds his general audiences in winter), inaugurated on December 7.
Entitled the “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024,” the Crèche, designed by two Bethlehem artists, Johny Andonia and Faten Nastas Mitwasi, depicts the Infant Jesus resting on a keffiyeh, the traditional black and white scarf used by Palestinians as a national symbol.
The Nativity scene is intended as a reminder that the Holy Land “is the daily scene of destruction, conflict, grief, and violence,” as the Vatican explained when presenting it. But the presence of the keffiyeh, in front of which the Pope paid his respects, triggered fierce criticism. The Times of Israel denounced the work as “provocative.”
Since the outbreak of hostilities, the Pope has consistently called for the laying down of arms, guaranteed access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, and the immediate release of Israeli hostages.
But the voice of the Holy See, which has tirelessly pleaded for the coexistence of the two states of Palestine and Israel, is struggling to be heard. And while the Pontiff has received the families of Israeli hostages on several occasions, his recent remarks, evoking the prospect of a “genocide” underway in the Gaza Strip, have sparked protests from Israel.
