VATICAN CITY: Khader Qassis traveled 32 hours from the West Bank, passing military checkpoints across three countries, to join hundreds of thousands of other young Catholics in Rome for a week-long pilgrimage.
While Rome thronged with singing pilgrims, the 20-year-old from Bethlehem said he felt some guilt that he was in the cheerful Italian capital while starvation was spreading in Gaza, which has been besieged by Israel for months.
“It’s hard when there are people in Gaza dreaming just to eat and I’m traveling,” Qassis told AFP.
The Vatican is holding its “Jubilee of Youth” this week, with up to a million 18-to-35 year-olds expected to take part.
The Vatican has singled out pilgrims from conflict zones — especially Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Ukraine — that made major “sacrifices” to get to the Eternal City.
For many living in war-scarred countries, the trip was a chance to experience a breath of normalcy.
“Being here lets us feel that we’re free,” said Jessie Khair, an 18-year-old Palestinian woman from the West Bank, wearing a black kufiyah scarf.
She was moved by the outpouring of sympathy over Gaza, “far from the borders, checkpoints and anything that could hurt us.”
At the majestic St. Peter’s Square, a group of pilgrims waved a Syrian flag.
Father Fadi Syriani was accompanying a group of 11 Syrian youths, many of whom left their country for the first time.
“It is a generation that has grown up in the years of war that started in 2011,” he told AFP, saying that Syrian Christian youths, a tiny minority in the country, felt “isolated” from the rest of the Church.
Many Christians have fled war in Syria, where a recent attack on a Damascus church killed 25 people.
In Rome, Syriani said, the youths can “witness that there is still hope.”
The Vatican’s youth event is also unfolding as Moscow pounds Ukraine with more deadly attacks despite Western ultimatums to end its invasion.
Leo XIV, who became pope in May, has brought hope to many Ukrainians after his predecessor pope Francis had repeatedly made comments that infuriated Ukrainians, who accused him of giving in to Russian imperialism.
“For the last few months, the communication is better than what it was,” said 23-year-old Svitlana Tryhub, from the front-line city of Zaporizhzhia but now living in Lviv near the Polish border.
“It’s important to be balanced, but it is important to be brave and speak up,” she said.
Most of Ukraine’s pilgrims came from western Ukraine, the most religious part of the country, with the largest share of Greek Catholics, who pledge allegiance to the Vatican.
Because of the ban on military-age men from leaving Ukraine, almost all were women.
Valerie Fabianska, an 18-year-old economy student, said she could “forgive” or pray alongside Russians only if those responsible for the invasion were jailed and their country “accepted its crimes” against Ukraine.
She said the war had made her more religious.
“When the world around you is so unstable, you can find some peace and stability in God,” she said, acknowledging nonetheless that it was “really hard.”
At Rome’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, an all-women choir sang amid a “prayer for Ukraine.”
Maria Khrystofora, a young nun from a western Ukrainian monastery, said she had noticed that more of her countrymen were coming to the church during the war.
“When people have nothing human to rely on, they turn to God to help them,” she said.