Message by Bishop Joseph Galea-Curmi
The Gospel of Matthew recounts a heart-wrenching event that darkens the early pages of the New Testament: the Massacre of the Innocents. Herod, feeling threatened by the birth of “a new king”, orders the killing of all male children under two in Bethlehem and its surroundings. It is a story of fear, power, and cruelty – and of the innocent caught in the crossfire of a tyrant’s ambitions.
In the last months, the world has witnessed a chilling horror in Gaza, where thousands of innocent lives – many of them children – have been brutally extinguished. What has unfolded in Gaza is not a mere “conflict” between equals. It is a humanitarian catastrophe. Entire families have been wiped out by airstrikes. Schools, hospitals, refugee camps – supposedly protected under international law – have been turned into rubble. The cries of grieving parents, the silence of buried children, and the suffocating grief of those left behind, should shake the conscience of humanity.
No political justification, no security rationale, can excuse the mass killing of civilians. International law is unambiguous: the deliberate or reckless targeting of civilians is a war crime. Yet, in Gaza, the scale of destruction and the proportion of civilian casualties can, in no way, be considered collateral damage. They indicate a systemic disregard for innocent life.
The world must confront this for what it is: the slaughter of the innocents. When bombs fall on sleeping families, when children are pulled lifeless from under the debris, when newborns die in incubators because of power cuts, when people die of starvation, we are not witnessing a tragedy of fate, but of choice. It is the choice of leaders who prefer vengeance over justice, domination over dialogue, and violence over peace.
No political justification, no security rationale, can excuse the mass killing of civilians.
We must say it plainly: the relentless killing of innocent people is evil. It cannot be softened by political language or silenced by diplomatic euphemisms. Every child killed is a universe annihilated. Every parent who buries their son or daughter joins the lamentation that once echoed in Ramah: “Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more” (Mt 2:18).
To condemn the massacre of innocents in Gaza is not to downplay the suffering of other innocent people. Israeli families, too, have experienced terrible violence by Hamas. The attacks of October 7 were atrocious. The harrowing plight of hostages was, and still is, a festering wound. All this should be condemned in the strongest terms. But no atrocity justifies another. Israel’s retaliation that turns densely populated civilian areas into free-fire zones is not self-defence. It is collective punishment. And collective punishment is itself a crime.
In Gaza, we are witnessing a generation scarred by trauma, denied education, health, and safety – a generation buried under the rubble of war and indifference. If the world allows this to continue, we will not only have failed Gaza’s children. We will have failed our own humanity.
Let us raise our voices, mourn those who are no more, and demand accountability for those who treat life so cheaply. Through our donations to Caritas, let us sustain and support the innocent civilians of Gaza. The dignity of every human life – Israeli, Palestinian, or otherwise – must be the starting point for justice and peace.
✠ Joseph Galea-Curmi
Auxiliary Bishop of Malta
This article was published on The Sunday Times of Malta on 10th August 2025.