Pope remembers mother of murdered Israeli hostage

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Pope Francis on Sunday expressed his condolences to the relatives of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza earlier this month, saying he had met the mother of one of them.

The six were among some 251 hostages kidnapped in southern Israel during the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 that sparked the ongoing war.

97 of them are still being held in the Gaza Strip, 33 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli military.

“I think of the Middle East. So many innocent victims. I think of the mothers who lost their sons in war. How many young lives were cut short,” Francis said at the end of the Angelus prayer.

“I am thinking of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was found dead in Gaza in early September along with five other hostages.

“In November last year, I met his mother Rachel, whose humanity impressed me. I am accompanying her during this time. I pray for the victims and remain close to all the hostages' families,” he added.

Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American citizen, was 23 when he was kidnapped from a music festival.

He sent his mother Rachel a text message saying “I love you,” followed by another saying “I'm sorry.”

A Hamas video from that day shows him being loaded onto a pickup truck. Part of his left arm is missing; it was torn off in the attack.

“May the conflict in Palestine and Israel end. May the violence end. May the hatred end. May the hostages be released. May negotiations continue. And may solutions for peace be found,” Francis said.

According to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, 1,205 people were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7, most of them civilians.

According to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza area, at least 40,738 people have died in the Israeli offensive. The UN Office for Human Rights says most of the dead are women and children.

The fighting has devastated Gaza, repeatedly displaced most of the country's 2.4 million residents and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

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