Catholic Nuns Choose to Remain in Gaza with those who cannot Flee: Amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East with the deadline to evacuate northern Gaza approaching, a group of Catholic sisters in the region have decided not to evacuate but rather remain with the vulnerable.
Despite the Israeli Defense order to everyone in northern Gaza to leave, the Sisters of the Rosary informed the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that they would be staying in their convent, which is connected to the Holy Family, the only Catholic parish in central Gaza, sheltering around 150 Catholics and 350 Greek Orthodox Christians from nearby parishes
The sisters made known that there were elderly people and people with disabilities who could not leave and they decided to remain with them.
“We will not go. People have nothing, not the basic things. Where should we go? To die on the street? We have old people, the Mother Teresa’s Sisters are also here, with people with multiple disabilities and elderly people…
“We need medicines. Many hospitals are destroyed. Where should we go?” Sister Nabila said to ACN.
Father Gabriel Romanelli, a priest caring for Roman Catholics in Gaza said there are insufficient resources in South Gaza to care for the vulnerable even if they decide to flee to the South. He further explained that the thousands of people who fled to the south resulted in a disastrous humanitarian situation with severe food and water shortages.
“What will they find in the south of the Gaza Strip? They will find hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who have fled Gaza City.” “And there is nothing in the south and the health and humanitarian situation is disastrous with lack of water and food,” he said.
Father Romanelli added that while many parishioners have no option but to stay, they believe that “they are safer with Jesus.”
He continued, “And that’s why together they pray, they pray, and hope that the Lord will protect them and that the people who are working and praying for peace will change the decision to strike the church which has always been an oasis of peace.”