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By Kathy Kelly, World BEYOND War, September 29, 2025
Catholic theologian and author James W. Douglass, a co-founder of Mary’s House Catholic Worker house of hospitality, describes the Global Sumud Flotilla as a miracle. Douglass believes we are living “in the heart of darkness.” Yet, the Global Sumud Flotilla’s witness, tenacity, and diversity astonish him. Here is a coordinated nonviolent campaign illuminating “the works of mercy” while confronting “the works of war.”
The Global Samud Flotilla now stands at 41 boats, carrying over 280 civilians from forty-four countries, including about 30 U.S. people. The participants, unarmed, engage in continuous nonviolence training. They aim to break the illegal blockade Gazans have endured since 2008 by delivering food, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to surviving families in Gaza.
At this crucial moment, as the flotilla nears Gaza, responses of the UN, the private sector, and individual states bear pivotal relevance.
The Vatican State’s potential to nonviolently help protect the Global Sumud Flotilla’s safe arrival occasions fervent hope among the millions of people looking toward Catholicism for guidance and peacemaking.
Daily, people agonize over the dire consequences of siege, bombing, starvation, and disease accelerating, alarmingly, in the Israeli Occupied Territory of Palestine.
Mike Miles, another Catholic Worker, likened the situation in Gaza to a resurrection. “Palestinian people are laying down their lives and the lives of their children to expose the gravity of crimes being waged against all humanity,” said Miles, speaking from a pulpit in Minnesota. “Their suffering invokes a resurrection. Millions are supporting them all over the world.”
Faith communities, including Pax Christi International, Pace Bene, the Catholic Worker, and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, urge the Vatican to affirm the humanitarian nature of the flotilla and call for safe passage of all civilians on board. In keeping with past clarification about the true terrors our world faces, the Vatican could oppose false labeling of humanitarian workers as “terrorists.”
So far, the Vatican and Pope Leo have offered to deliver the humanitarian relief if it is offloaded in Cyprus. But the Gaza Sumud Flotilla has pledged to break the siege and, in doing so, it will rely on the basic tenet of nonviolence which Gandhi called “truth force.” For many years, Gazans have suffered from Israel’s cruel and lethal siege, closing the Palestinian access to the sea and to land crossings. Flotilla participants and their supporters want justice, not vengeance. The justice of their mission to open up a humanitarian corridor to Gaza requires arrival at their pledged destination: Gaza.
With mingled lament and prayer, let us yearn to amplify their message. Let us pray that the Vatican will join Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other faith-based voices to clamor for atonement, reparations, an immediate ceasefire, release of all hostages, and a safe welcome, on Gazan shores, for the Gaza Sumud Flotilla.
The post Miracle on the Mediterranean: An Appeal to the Vatican State: Protect the Gaza Sumud Flotilla’s Safe Arrival appeared first on World BEYOND War.
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