Here’s the new humanitarian use found for Pope Francis’s ‘popemobile’

One of the ‘popemobiles’ used by Pope Francis is being turned into a mobile healthcare unit for the benefit of children in war-torn Gaza.

In the months before his death in April, Pope Francis asked the humanitarian aid network Caritas to oversee the transformation of the vehicle.

“The purpose of the initiative is to safeguard and uphold children’s fundamental rights and dignity,” Caritas said in a statement at the weekend.

Gaza humanitarian crisis “shameful”, pope said

Francis, who telephoned Gaza’s only Catholic church almost every day after the onset of the Hamas-Israel war in October 2023, was critical of the Israelis’ military campaign in the Palestinian territory.

In an address to diplomats in January this year, the late pontiff described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as “very serious and shameful”, per the Reuters news agency.

“We cannot in any way accept the bombing of civilians,” he said, in a speech delivered by an aide. “We cannot accept that children are freezing to death because hospitals have been destroyed or a country’s energy network has been hit.”

Thousands of Palestinian children killed, nearly 1m displaced

According to figures published by the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, at least 52,400 Palestinians have been killed and 118,000 injured since the war began. The Palestinian death toll includes more than 15,000 children, the MoH says.

At least 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced during the conflict, the United Nations Relief and Works says. Per UNICEF, the number of children displaced during the last 19 months stands at almost a million.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is increasingly critical, especially for the nearly one million displaced children,” Caritas said.

“When access to food, water and healthcare is cut off, children are often the first and hardest hit. Starvation, infection, and other preventable conditions put their lives at risk.”

“Equipment for diagnosis, examination, and treatment”

Speaking in the Catholic news media, Caritas’s Peter Brune said the popemobile chosen for refurbishment is a vehicle that carried Pope Francis during his visit to Bethlehem in May 2014.

“Since then, the vehicle had been standing on display in a public square in the Palestinian city,” Brune told ACI Prensa.

The revamped popemobile will be staffed by a driver and doctors, Caritas says. “It is currently being fitted with equipment for diagnosis, examination, and treatment - including rapid tests for infections, suture kits, syringes and needles, oxygen supply, vaccines, and a refrigerator for medicines,” the body added.

The Vatican News Agency, the official media outlet of the Vatican City, said on Monday: “Pope Francis often stated that ‘Children are not numbers. They are faces. Names. Stories. And each one is sacred‘, and with this final gift, his words have become action.”

Pope Francis, who was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, served as the head of the Catholic Church from March 2013 until his death, at the age of 88, on April 22. His successor is to be elected at a papal conclave held in the Vatican from Wednesday, May 7.

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