Pope Leo XIV sent 5,000 doses of antibiotics to Gaza this week to help children in need after the reopening of key border crossings allowed humanitarian aid to enter the region.
According to Vatican News, the shipment was organized by the Vatican’s Office of the Papal Almoner, the dicastery that manages carrying out the Holy Father’s charitable works.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, said the mission puts into action Pope Leo’s first apostolic exhortation, Dilexi Te, which urges concrete love for the poor.
“We are putting into practice the words of the Apostolic Exhortation Dilexi te, dedicated to the poor,” Cardinal Krajewski said, according to Vatican News. “It is necessary to act, to pay attention to those in need.”
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The Vatican’s delivery comes as Israel authorizes up to 600 humanitarian aid trucks per day to enter Gaza as part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, Reuters reported.
The antibiotics address a dire medical shortage in the war-torn enclave, where hospitals have struggled to treat patients since the conflict began in October 2023. After an Israeli tank shell struck Gaza’s only Catholic parish on July 17, killing three and wounding others, local pharmacist and former Palestinian Economy Minister Bassem Khoury told CatholicVote that 71-year-old Najwa Abu Dawoud bled to death because the medical team lacked basic surgical supplies to operate on her.
“The conditions in the hospital are deplorable,” parish priest Father Romanelli said in July, according to Aleteia. “Most of the hospitals in the strip have been destroyed.”
Caritas Jerusalem — the “social arm of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land” and a member of the Vatican’s Caritas Internationalis network — was among the first humanitarian groups to mobilize after the ceasefire. On Oct. 14, it reported distributing 10,000 bottles of infant formula to families with newborns and young children who “had been deprived of basic nutrition throughout the months of conflict.”
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