“Salaam Alaikum!” said Pope Francis, smiling into the camera of a smartphone in Rome. On the other side of the screen in Gaza, 19-year-old Suhail Abu Daoud watched in shock and delight. The people here trapped together at the compound of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City had endured months of daily bombings and the Israeli ground assault on northern Gaza. The video call would become a daily occurrence for months.
“The first time Pope Francis called,” he said, “I had the priest’s phone in my hand, I was very surprised and ran to get Father Youssef. I answered and talked to the pope himself.”
That first call came in December 2023. In the following days and weeks, Francis called the Rev. Youssef Asaad, the Rev. Gabriel Romanelli and the community sheltered at Holy Family every night at 8 p.m. right up to the night before he died.
Calling Gaza
“He would ask us very simple questions,” remembered Mr. Abu Daoud, “how we were, what we ate, how the church was. He called us even when he was at the hospital.” Pope Francis kept Gaza in his prayers “until the last one, on Easter Sunday, where he mentioned us, and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and all around the world. He was a pope of peace.”
After his death, the Vatican reported that it was the late pope’s wish that his Popemobile be converted into a mobile clinic for Gaza’s children.
Holy Family Church has rung its bells every night at 8 p.m. in remembrance of Pope Francis.
This unwavering support from Pope Francis will forever remain in Mr. Abu Daoud’s memories. He hopes that the next pope will keep Palestinian Christians in his prayers, “whatever his nationality or whomever he may be.”
Mr. Abu Daoud, who finished high school with honors just three months before the beginning of the war, said that his hope to become a priest was encouraged by Pope Francis himself. “He told me not to give up, especially in times of war, ‘where the devil is very clever,’ [Pope Francis] said.”
“God willing, I will be able to travel to Italy and start my theological studies there, where many foreigners study to become priests.” Today, this dream seems almost impossible—Gaza’s borders are closed to the rest of the world, and a new offensive from the Israel Defense Forces looms.
Around 400 people still take refuge in the Holy Family compound in Gaza City. “Around 150 managed to leave abroad,” Mr. Daoud said, “and the war killed 49.” Scores of other Gaza Christians found refuge at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius.
As the conflict in Gaza enters its 18th month, Christians in Gaza continue to pray daily for “a lasting peace,” he said—in Palestine, in the Middle East and “in all countries affected by war and death.”
“All we want is peace; nobody wants to live over a year and a half of war,” Mr. Daoud said. “We do not enter politics. We simply want peace and to be able to move around freely like anybody else.
“Right now, we are suffering; our whole life has been suffering, yet we all believe that we will live to see the day when there will be no more wars. “Peace will be stronger than war,” he concluded, pointing out that Jesus once passed through Gaza when the Holy Family fled into Egypt.
A historic first
Pope Francis is also remembered fondly in other precincts of the Middle East. He was the first pope to travel to the Arabian Peninsula.
Visiting the United Arab Emirates in February 2019, Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Shaikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, signed a common document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. The document stressed the importance of universal brotherhood, condemned religious violence and urged religious freedom and the equality of rights and education with a clear purpose: fostering relationship between the Islamic and Christian worlds.
The initial themes of the document were mentioned during the pope’s visit to Egypt in 2017. Mario Hermina, a 32-year-old Copt, was in Cairo where he was studying theology. “It was my third time seeing him,” he said. “It was amazing.”
Mr. Hermina was especially struck by the humility exhibited by the pope at these encounters. In Cairo, the pope stepped out of “a very small car to greet us. I could not believe it. I am certain this was not in the protocol, yet he still did it.” The pope, he remembered, “was very approachable.”
He also had a chance to meet the pope when he received the honor of carrying the Egyptian flag into the opening ceremonies of World Youth Day in Krakow in 2016.
The pope’s visit to Egypt was a turning point, not only for many Egyptian Christians in strengthening their faith, but also in the way they were perceived by their Muslim peers. There are around 10 million Christians in Egypt (according to the government, but around 15 million according to the Coptic Church.)
Egypt’s Copts represent the largest population of Christians in the Middle East-North Africa region. Tensions between Egypt’s Muslims and Christians had been on the rise. After the deposing of Muslim Brotherhood leader and Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Islamist groups in Egypt have been again on the rise. ISIS has established a presence in the Sinai.
“I have never had any issue with my Muslim counterparts, we all live together, yet, I had the feeling that they felt closer to us after the pope’s visit,” Mr. Hermina said. Many of his friends were moved by the death of Pope Francis, “Muslims and Christians alike.”
This closeness was partially enabled by the pope’s meeting with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, considered one of the highest religious authorities in Sunni Islam. “The imam called the pope ‘my brother,’ which has a very high significance in Islam,” Mr. Hermina said. Both the pope and the imam met on several occasions after this visit. To many they appeared to have established a strong personal connection.
Pope Francis’ appreciation for, and attention to, improved intercommunal relations with the Islamic world was also evident during his visit to Morocco in March 2019, when he went to visit the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams, Morchidines and Morchidates in Rabat. During the visit, Pope Francis listened to testimonies and heard from the institute’s students. Among them was Aboubakr Hmaidouch, a 25-year-old Islamic student from France, who described how his theological education focused on a moderate version of Islam, spirituality and fostering love and unity.
Powerful moments in Mosul
During his 2021 visit to Iraq, Pope Francis went to visit the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. “He went to his home to visit him,” remembered the Rev. Olivier Poquillon. “In [Iraqi] culture, it is one of the highest honors.” Father Poquillon, who hails from France, is the local representative of the Dominican priests in charge of the restoration of three Chrisitan landmark churches in the Old City of Mosul. The ancient churches had been essentially destroyed during the ISIS occupation of Mosul between 2014 and 2017 and the coalition campaign to drive ISIS out of Nineveh Province in Iraq in 2017.
The pope’s visit to Iraq was marked by three powerful moments: his visit with the Grand Ayatollah, followed by a visit to Ur, the biblical home of Abraham, and his visit to Mosul.
“There was a lot of symbolism linked to the pope’s visit to Iraq,” Father Poquillon said, “the biblical dimension, with Adam, created from mud between the Tigris and the Euphrates, as well as the location of the father of faith, Abraham.
“[Abraham] said, ‘My father was a wandering Aramean’ and mentioned Ur, which is where the pope went,” Father Poquillon said. “The conditions were difficult; it was in the middle of the desert, there was a strong wind, but he decided to go. He also reminded everyone of the common origin and the shared responsibility between people and faiths.”
Pope Francis prayed in the middle of the ruins of four churches for the victims of war and terrorism. He called for peace and reconciliation, and the rebuilding of coexistence between communities.
This trip was a dangerous one. “Against all the advice that was given to him, he went to a place that was completely destroyed, saw the destruction and the pain, and, just like Jesus, he looked at the pain,” Father Poquillon said, who had a previous relationship with the pope as the secretary general of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union.
“When we were leaving the scene, the cars were blocked, as there were very tight roads and difficult traffic. He got out of the car, saw a family that was living in the ruins of the old city, which was over 80 percent destroyed, in extreme poverty. He went up to them and blessed them.” On the same trip, the pope also visited the highest Shia cleric, “as well as the most humble believers,” Father Poquillon said.
Surprised by this breach of protocol, although a common one for Francis, Father Poquillon approached the family and asked the grandfather, “Do you know who this man was?”
“The old man answered, ‘I do not know who he was, but he is a man of God, and he came to us.’ This is what Pope Francis represented: a man of great humanity.”
The Rev. Georges Salhoum was in Rome when the pope died and participated in the funeral Mass. Although Pope Francis did not manage to visit Lebanon, his closeness to the Christians of Lebanon was well known.
“When he was a cardinal, in Buenos Aires, he used to go to the Mar Maroun church, a Maronite church, and participate sometimes in our celebrations, share meals with the Lebanese community,” Father Salhoum remembered. “He was very touched by what was happening in Lebanon, but also in Palestine and Syria. He rejected injustice, killing and would always pray for peace, led by justice in this world,” he said. Father Georges hopes the next pope will similarly keep the Middle East in his heart and prayers.
Pope Francis reminded the world about conflicts in the region that were sometimes forgotten. He mentioned the Syrian civil war on multiple occasions. In 2017, he deplored the killing of civilians during the civil war, and after the fall of the Assad regime in November 2024, he addressed the rebels, asking them to find a political solution to Syria’s various conflicts, one that promoted stability and unity of the beleaguered country.
In Aleppo, a Mass was celebrated in honor of Pope Francis at the St. Francis of Assisi Church. “He was a great pope,” said Marcell, a young Christian. Pope Francis has been a source of hope to the community in these uncertain times in Syria, he said.
“During Easter, we paraded in the street, holding the cross,” Marcell said. “We are scared, of course,”he said, “but we have to live” he quickly added—an expression of determination and hope that the late Pope Francis would no doubt have appreciated.
