TUNGURU: Why Kenyan Christians should emulate Pope Francis stance on Palestine

Every day since October 10, 2023, three days after the October 7 uprising in Gaza, a phone call was made to the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.

Fr Gabriel Romanelli, the cleric of the besieged territory’s only Catholic parish, states that most days, the call lasted about 15 minutes, during which the caller would speak to the church leaders and some of the Palestinians sheltering at the church, call for peace, and send his blessings to all of Gaza’s people.

The caller was Pope Francis, and the daily calls became a daily reminder that Gaza was not forgotten. The last call was short, barely 30 seconds. Just enough to say hello and ask if everyone was okay. But for Gaza’s small Christian community, even that fleeting connection felt like light cutting through the darkness. A sign that, even in war, hope still had a voice.

On April 21, which also happened to be Easter Monday, it was announced to the world that Pope Francis had passed on. To the few hundred Christians in Gaza, this loss hit close. Some have been reported to say that they feel like orphans now.

POPE FRANCIS

 Argentine-born Francis, the first person from the Americas or the Southern Hemisphere to lead the world’s billion-plus Catholics, was a strong supporter of workers, unions, the poor, and the exploited.

As the leader of the Roman Catholic Church (2013–25), he introduced many reforms to the church. He sought to promote unity between Catholics, non-Catholics, and non-Christians, and he made historic apologies to survivors of clergy sexual abuse and to Canada’s Indigenous peoples. He was also a strong critic of the capitalist class and their political handmaidens, especially in the United States. He abhorred war.

In 2019, during a spiritual retreat at the Vatican by leaders of rival factions of South Sudan’s government, the pope shocked many by kneeling and kissing the feet of South Sudanese political rivals, pleading with them to pursue peace and unity for the sake of their country’s future. He consistently condemned the war in Ukraine and made repeated appeals for peace, urging all parties to negotiate and end the conflict. He acknowledged the suffering of the Ukrainian people and condemned the "madness of war".

The Pope's strong positions against the Gaza war ntroversy in Jerusalem by unveiling a Vatican nativity scene with baby Jesus laid on a keffiyeh (the iconic Palestinian scarf) dubbed Christ in the Rubble.

The imagery echoed a 2023 Christmas sermon by Rev Munther Isaac of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, who began the trend to emphasize that if Jesus were born today, it would be in the midst of a war-ravaged Palestine. Bethlehem is located in modern-day Palestine.

Some of his most explicit criticism of Israel came late last year when excerpts of an upcoming book were published. "According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide," Pope Francis wrote. "It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies."

KENYAN MISCONCEPTIONS

 At the start of April, the Kenya Palestine Coalition had the honour of hosting Rev. Moss Ntlha.

Rev. Moss is a respected evangelical leader and veteran of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. During a lecture at a local university, we posed a simple question to the students: how would you define apartheid, and what comes to mind when you think of Palestine? The responses were quite revealing.

Though the sample size was small, the insights reflected broader Kenyan perceptions. Almost everyone associated apartheid solely with South Africa. Not a single student connected it to the current situation in Palestine.

There’s a gap in understanding the Palestinian cause, for instance, misconceptions like the idea that Palestinians are uneducated (yet, as of 2024, Palestine has a literacy rate of nearly 98%). It’s clear that we need to do more to break the silence and challenge the misinformation that shapes how we see this struggle.

At another forum with Rev. Moss and a group of Kenyan pastors, one thing stood out clearly - the widespread misconception that there are no Christians in Palestine.

This false belief often fuels resistance to the idea that the church should speak up for Palestinians. It makes the conflict seem distant, irrelevant, even unworthy of concern for many Kenyan Christians who feel it has nothing to do with them. This exposes two painful truths: first, that many Kenyan Christians won’t engage with an issue unless it directly affects them; and second, that we’ve grown comfortable with others suffering, as long as it’s not us.

During that same forum, we were joined via video call by priests from Bethlehem. Watching the Kenyan clergy take in their words, you could see the realization dawning on them that perhaps this was a more nuanced issue than they had previously thought.

And just to be clear: our empathy shouldn’t be conditional. We shouldn’t care only because there are Christians suffering too. We should care because injustice anywhere demands a response from all of us, especially those who claim to follow Christ. Another major misconception lies in confusing the Israel of the Bible with the modern State of Israel.

The two are not the same and any honest biblical scholar will tell you that. Yet, many Kenyan Christians often reach for verses, misinterpreted and taken out of context, to justify the occupation of Palestine. This selective reading of scripture fuels silence and complicity, instead of compassion and truth.

But if the Pope, with all the weight of history and scholarship behind the seat he holds, could clearly see the injustice for what it is, why can’t we? Why do we let misinterpretations cloud our sense of compassion and justice? 

Palestine in History

Did you know that the word gauze, the medical bandage, traces its name back to Gaza, a city in Palestine? The name "Palestine" itself has deep historical roots, originating from the Philistines who lived in the region around 1200 BCE. Shakespeare even referenced Palestine in his 1604 play Othello, where a character speaks of a woman who would have walked to Palestine for love.

And of course, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a town firmly located within historic Palestine. Palestinian Christians are the oldest Christian community in the world, indigenous to the Holy Land and direct descendants of the earliest followers of Jesus Christ. Their presence in the region goes back centuries, rooted in the very birthplace of the faith itself. These references remind us that Palestine has long existed as a diverse, multicultural land, one with a rich and continuous presence in world history.

Land

At the root of the Israel-Palestine strife is land. The struggle for land is nothing new. In fact, as Kenyans, it’s something many of us carry in our bones. It’s personal.

From the colonial dispossession to post-independence land injustices, we’ve seen firsthand how land can be a site of deep pain, resistance, and identity. In 1948 when the UN declared the state of Israel in Palestine, there was a nakba (catastrophe in Arabic). Before the Nakba, Palestine was a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society.

The 1948 Nakba led to the forced migration and dispossession of a large portion of the Palestinian population, marking a significant turning point in the history of the region. In Kenya, this was the same period the Mau Mau were rising up to reclaim our land from British colonialists, leading to the 1952 State of Emergency.

The two struggles, though worlds apart, were rooted in the same fight: the right to self-determination, resistance to displacement, and defiance against imperialism.

And just as Hamas is branded a terrorist group today, the Mau Mau were also labeled terrorists by the colonial regime, despite fighting for their homeland. Palestinians who were displaced often carry keys. These keys act as symbols of their homes, their roots, and the lands they were forced to leave behind. These keys represent a stubborn hope that one day they will return, even though many of those homes now lie in ruins.

Last year, after the devastating El Niño floods that claimed hundreds of lives and displaced thousands, elements within Kenya’s ruling elite seized the moment to push an agenda of 'reclaiming' riparian land. In areas along the Nairobi River, from Korogocho to Mathare and Dandora, residents were forcefully evicted, many of them already vulnerable and living in informal settlements. The irony? That same land was quickly repurposed for government housing projects.

Community organisations based in these spaces have had to mobilise public support to defend the land from opportunistic land grabbers. What’s unfolding here mirrors, almost too closely, the patterns of displacement and disenfranchisement seen in Palestine - a thread that ties local land injustice to a broader imperialist agenda. Indeed, none of us are free until we are all free. Cruelty The Israeli state pours cement over ancient streams - streams mentioned in the Bible.

They uproot centuries-old olive trees, seize grazing land, and steal livestock to block Palestinian farmers from accessing their ancestral livelihoods. They deface sacred sites and demolish churches that have stood since biblical times. And that’s before we even get to the horrific stories of children tortured and families broken, shared in real-time on social media for the world to witness. It’s no wonder Pope Francis could so clearly name the cruelty being unleashed on the Palestinian people. His bold stance should stir something in us too. Kenyan Christians cannot afford silence in the face of injustice—especially when injustice has been normalised. Silence in the church The church in Kenya has long been known for its silence, especially when it matters most.

During the June 25th protests last year, when Kenyan youth filled the streets demanding accountability, the church largely kept quiet. It wasn’t until young people began occupying churches, demanding to know where they stood, that the silence was broken. Some churches even turned away protestors seeking shelter. Too often, we’ve seen churches accept offerings and donations from corrupt politicians with no questions asked until public outcry forces them to backtrack. And even then, there are those few bold enough to say they’ll still take the money, no matter its source. It’s time for that to change. The church must stop being a distant place we visit on Sundays and become an active part of Kenyan life. It must speak to and about “we the people”. Like Pope Francis, who consistently speaks truth to power and defends the ordinary people, the Kenyan church must find its voice and use it. Silence, in the face of injustice, is complicity.

Call a spade a spade

To the Irish, it looks like an occupation, something they know all too well. South Africans call it apartheid, because they've lived through it. And the pope? He named it plainly: injustice.

Pope Francis' final Easter address called for an end to violence worldwide, and compassion for the world's marginalized people. He explicitly called for a ceasefire in Gaza. So what can you do as a Kenyan Christian? Start by learning. Understand the Palestinian struggle for yourself. Ask the hard questions: does any child deserve to have their innocence stolen by war? Take a stand. It’s the right thing to do. Join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Refuse to support companies and entities complicit in this genocide. And pray for our brothers and sisters in Palestine who continue to endure the brutal weight of colonisation. Because even the smallest action, when done with conviction, becomes part of a much bigger fight. A fight against injustice. A fight against imperialism.

Rose Tunguru is an activist and a member of the Kenya-Palestinian Solidarity Movement