Pope Leo meets PA’s Abbas, discusses need for Gaza aid, two-state solution

Thursday’s visit is the first meeting between the Palestinian Authority president and the new pope; Abbas met Leo’s predecessor, Francis, several times

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time on Thursday, and the two men discussed aid to civilians in Gaza and hopes for a two-state solution to end the conflict in the region.

The meeting, which lasted about an hour and was described as “cordial” in a brief Vatican statement, comes nearly a month after the US-brokered ceasefire agreement came into effect in the Gaza Strip.

The pope, who was elected in May, and Abbas, who has led the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority for decades, had not met in person previously. They had spoken over the phone in July to talk about developments in the conflict in Gaza and violence in the West Bank.

“During the cordial talks, it was recognized that there is an urgent need to provide assistance to the civilian population in Gaza and to end the conflict by pursuing a two-State solution,” the Holy See said.

Pope Leo repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza before the current truce was reached last month. In September, Leo and his top diplomats also told President Isaac Herzog that a two-state solution was the “only way out of the war.”

The war was sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people and took another 251 hostages. Abbas’s Fatah movement is the rival to Hamas, which took control of Gaza in 2007 from Fatah in a bloody coup.

Abbas was visiting the Vatican to mark the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Palestine, a document governing relations between Vatican City and the Palestinian Authority, and governing the church’s activity in PA territories.

Abbas arrived in Rome on Wednesday afternoon, and visited the Basilica of St. Mary Major to pay his respects at the tomb of Leo’s predecessor, pope Francis.

Over the years, Abbas had met Francis several times, maintaining frequent phone contacts after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack and subsequent war in Gaza.

Francis was more outspoken about the Gaza war than Leo has been, at times in ways that raised Israeli ire.

The late pontiff said at one point that the accusation that Israel was committing genocide should be investigated. A month earlier, a seasonal nativity scene at the Vatican — at which Francis prayed — was removed after backlash over its depiction of the baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh, the traditional scarf used by Palestinians as a national symbol.

Lazar Berman contributed to this story.