Pope calls Palestinian leader ‘angel of peace’ during visit
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gives Pope Francis a rosary during a private audience at the Vatican City. (Reuters)
Saturday, 16 May 2026
Pope Francis praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting Saturday at the Vatican that underscored the Holy See’s warm relations with the Palestinians.
Francis made the compliment during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the “angel of peace destroying the bad spirit of war.”
Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.” During his 2014 visit to Israel and the West Bank, Francis called both Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres men of peace.
Abbas is in Rome for the canonization Sunday of two 19th-century nuns from what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. The new saints, Mariam Bawardy and Marie Alphonsine Ghattas, are the first from the region to be canonized since the early days of Christianity.
Abbas on Saturday offered Francis relics of the two new saints.
Church officials are holding up the new saints as a sign of hope and encouragement for Christians in the Middle East at a time when violent persecution from Islamic extremists has driven many Christians from the region of Christ’s birth.
Abbas’ visit also comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty with the “state of Palestine” that made explicit its recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The Vatican said it had expressed “great satisfaction” over the new treaty during the talks with the Palestinian delegation. It said the pope, and later the Vatican secretary of state, also expressed hopes that direct peace talks with Israel would resume.
“To this end, the wish was reiterated that with the support of the international community, Israelis and Palestinians may take with determination courageous decisions to promote peace,” a Vatican statement said.
It added that interreligious dialogue was needed to combat terrorism.
Cathy
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Publius Huldah
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Steve
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I think he’s walking around with one foot in The Twilight Zone.
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As a ‘traditional’ Catholic, I have serious issues with the current Pope. He is an ideologue, and as a Catholic I adhere to Catholic ideology, but he cannot invent ideology, only profess and defend it. Matters of Faith. Not politics, or wealth distribution, or public health, or immigration.
And the Pope does not need any help getting into the weeds by media who would just as soon see Christianity vanish from the surface of the Earth and deliberately or intentionally misquote him.
I think the MSM and an alarming proportion of the voters in the U.S.A. are in the Twilight Zone if they think maligning the Pope is going to improve the mess this country is in.
Check this out. We report you decide
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/05/20/abbas-and-pope-francis-what-media-didnt-tell-about-angel-peace-comment.html
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Ti, good link. Now that’s messed up. He did not call him
“An Angel of Peace” What he said was.
“According to VaticanInsider.com, “Francis presented a gift to the Palestinian leader, commenting: ‘May the angel of peace destroy the evil spirit of war. I thought of you: may you be an angel of peace.’”
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But his eminence ought to give it a rest mugging it up with Obama and preaching Climate Change.
Didn’t we finally clear the Vatican on charges they were Nazi sympathizers, and now THIS?
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