THERE IS something of the Friar Tuck about Fr Gabriel Romanelli. He is a rotund and balding Argentinian who exudes infectious joy. He is blessed with an innocent sense of fun which comes, perhaps, from recognising the beauty of life and of creation in the midst of the suffering around him. He is a man who can easily make you wonder if he is perhaps one of the pure of heart whom Jesus said can “see God”.
Without doubt, he is also a man who can see suffering. As parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family, the one Catholic church in Gaza, he says he suffers deeply for Jewish Israelis massacred in the Hamas terrorist at tacks of 7 October and for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died in Israeli military operations since. He also suffers for his small flock, which before the war numbered 135 people out of an overall Gaza population of 2.3 million and which are now fewer because some have died and others have fled.
