ROME – Father Gabriel Romanelli, pastor of Gaza’s Catholic parish, has said that Pope Francis has begun calling again after a hiatus during his hospitalization and recovery, and he has condemned a proposal to turn the Gaza Strip into a luxurious beach resort.

For Romanelli, the proposal, put forward by United States President Donald Trump earlier this year, constitutes a violation of human rights and is tantamount to treating human beings like “objects.”

In an interview with Vatican News, the Vatican’s state-run information platform, Romanelli said a few days ago the pope resumed his nightly calls to Holy Family parish in Gaza, where around 500 people are sheltering amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

“The pope called, he greeted us, he asked how we were doing, how the people were doing,” Romanelli said, saying the call was short, but “deeply felt and appreciated.”

“We saw him at the Angelus on Sunday, and we thanked him for his appeal for peace,” Romanelli said, referring to Francis’s surprise in-person appearance at the conclusion of an April 6 Mass for the Jubilee for the Sick and Healthcare Workers.

In a written text for his Sunday Angelus, the pope asked for peace throughout the world, saying that in Gaza, “people are reduced to living in unimaginable conditions, without shelter, without food, without clean water,” and asking that dialogue would be resumed.

Romanelli said the people at Holy Family parish “were very happy” to hear from Pope Francis, who called periodically throughout his 38-day hospital stay, having been admitted Feb. 14 for a complex respiratory infection and double pneumonia, and discharged March 23 after two brushes with death.

“When he called, we were at the door of the rectory, inside the compound, and the children and young people started shouting, ‘long live the pope!’ in Arabic and in Italian,” Romanelli said, saying they thanked the pope for his repeated appeals for peace.

The situation in Gaza “is truly terrible in the whole Strip, so we really appreciated his closeness, his prayer and his concern for everyone. We thanked him,” Romanelli said.

Romanelli echoed the pope’s words, calling the living conditions in Gaza “unimaginable,” and urged the world to pray for peace and to work to convince national leaders that “peace is possible.”

“As long as this armed conflict continues, no problem will be solved, essentially, it’s quite the opposite,” he said, saying it is necessary for the war to end, but with conditions in place that serve the interests of all those involved, “Palestinians and Israelis.”

Gaza’s small Christian population is stable thanks to the “constant help” of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, led by Italian Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Romanelli said, saying the 500 people at Holy Family church and their Muslim neighbors are currently “fine,” but provisions are beginning to run out.

“In other neighborhoods everything is missing: food, water. The crisis already existed before the wary, imagine now, after a year and a half of war. The food, water, and medicine emergency is very urgent throughout the Strip,” he said.

Romanelli called Gaza “a prison,” saying the Strip “has become a cage, a big cage,” and the church tries to help everyone it can, including the countless Muslim civilians who are in the same boat.

“We help everyone, Christians and non-Christians, we try to truly make an instrument of peace for everyone,” he said, calling the situation a prolonged Lent.

Noting that estimates for the number of people living in the Gaza Strip, which currently sit at 2.3 million, vary and are difficult to determine since the outbreak of the current war in October 2023, Romanelli said what is important is to work for peace, and to give hope to the people, “that they can continue to live in the Gaza Strip without moving them.”

To this end, he referred to a proposal put forward by Trump in February to turn Gaza into a luxurious beach resort, after removing half of its resident population.

Trump in February said the U.S. could “take over” the Palestinian territory, claiming that it is “the best location in the Middle East” and could be turned into “a better Monaco”, while its population would be displaced to other countries across the Middle East and beyond.

He said the decision was not “made lightly,” and claimed to have high-level support for the proposal from unnamed leaders with whom he has supposedly discussed the idea.

Shortly after those remarks, an apparently AI-generated video was published on social media, shocking users by transforming scenes of destruction in Gaza into a swanky, Riviera-style resort called “Trump Gaza.”

In the video, which Trump shared on both Instagram and his own Truth Social platform, the war-torn Gaza Strip is rebuilt as a lavish beachside destination, with children running out of rubble into palm trees and luxurious buildings.

The video depicts a giant golden statue of Trump, as well as belly dancers and a man presumed to be Elon Musk being showered with cash, as well as depictions of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing.

Shocked users condemned the video for its lack of sensitivity, as well as for ignoring the current destruction and suffering in Gaza while being immune to the plight of its people by proposing an American-led redevelopment that prioritizes wealth at the expense the local, war-stricken population.

The creator of the video, Solo Avital, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, later told media that he created the video while experimenting with AI tools and that it was intended as political satire.

An Israeli-born US citizen, Avital said the video was posted to Instagram by a business partner and that it was shared by Trump without his knowledge or consent.

Romanelli, however, in his remarks condemned the proposal, saying, “We must respect the rights of every human being, regardless of their citizenship, of their religion, of their situation.”

“The Palestinian people in this part of the Holy Land, in Gaza, are made up of 2 million and 300 thousand people, they are human people!”

One of the first and most universally recognized rights, he said, “is the right to have one’s own land.”

“People are subjects of rights; they are not objects. You cannot move and deprive people of their rights, first of all the right to life and to live in their land, and to have assistance and property, their affection, and their business. True peace must be built on justice, not injustice,” he said.

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