(RNS) — The American Jewish Committee said Thursday (July 31) that it will donate $25,000 toward the “rehabilitation” of the Holy Family Church and community in Gaza. The only Catholic church in Gaza was damaged by what the Israel Defense Forces called a munitions misfire by one of its tanks in the church’s vicinity on July 17. Three civilians who were sheltering in the church complex were killed in the incident and several — included the parish priest — were injured.
Gaza’s tiny Christian community — numbering just about 1,000 people prior to the Israel-Hamas war and now dwindling — was particularly close to the heart of Pope Francis, who tried to phone the community every evening, even during his last hospitalization before his death on April 21. The church has been housing and feeding a few hundred Christians and Muslims for nearly two years as the war continues.
Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC director of interreligious affairs, told RNS that while AJC is a Jewish organization primarily focused on the safety and security of the Jewish people and the state of Israel, “our concern and empathy extends beyond the Jewish people, to all humanity, and particularly towards the innocents caught up in this awful war.”
Hamas fighters and IDF soldiers have fought several battles in the vicinity of the church since Hamas infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostage about 250. Since the war began, more than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its tally.
Marans said that the Holy Family Church has been the center of the Christian community in Gaza for many years and that “the damage wrought upon it accidentally by the Israeli military” has affected the struggling population.
“It is also a community that is particularly cherished by Catholic leadership, including the late Pope Francis, the current Pope Leo XIV and Cardinal Pizzaballa,” Marans said. Pierbattista Pizzaballa serves as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and recently visited the church to assess the damage and provide strength and solidarity to the community.
The Archdiocese of New York and the Catholic Near East Welfare Association will facilitate the distribution of the funds, according to an AJC news release.
Marans said the donation “is a tangible way to help, and also a powerful statement, together with our close Catholic partner Cardinal (Timothy) Dolan and the Archdiocese of New York, the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel.”
The Archdiocese of New York was previously part of an interreligious coalition that provided funds to help rebuild a home damaged on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, an Israeli border community devastated by Hamas during the Oct. 7 massacre, according to the AJC news release.
“We appreciate AJC’s expression of consolation and support and are thankful for the opportunity to do good as Jews and Catholics together in this way, to bring some light to the darkness of war,” Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said in a statement.
This story has been updated to correct phrasing in the second to last paragraph.