‘Popemobile’ Turns Into Health Clinic For Gaza’s Children, As Pope Francis Wished

One of Pope Francis’ “popemobiles” is being turned into a mobile health clinic for Gaza’s wounded and starving children — one of the pontiff’s last wishes before he died and a symbol of his long-held dedication to the Palestinian people.

Francis used the popemobile during his 2014 pilgrimage of the Holy Land, which includes Israel and the Palestinian territories. Before his April 21 death, the 88-year-old pope asked Catholic aid network Caritas to use that popemobile to aid Palestinian families struggling to survive in war-torn Gaza, the Vatican News reported Sunday.

“This vehicle represents the love, care and closeness that His Holiness Pope Francis showed to the most vulnerable, something he expressed throughout the crisis,” Caritas Jerusalem Secretary General Anton Asfar said in a statement.

Israeli forces have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in ongoing military campaigns that follow the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel by Hamas. In addition to strikes, the Israeli military also has targeted health and aid workers, destroyed life-sustaining infrastructure and indefinitely blocked humanitarian assistance from entering the occupied territory.

The result — disease, starvation, infections, amputations, congenital disabilities and hypothermia — has exacerbated the crisis, particularly for Gaza’s children, who make up roughly half the territory’s population. Francis had specifically advocated for Gaza’s youth, saying in January that anyone who harms children will have to answer to God.

“With the vehicle, we will be able to reach children who currently lack access to care — children who are injured and malnourished,” Caritas Sweden Secretary General Peter Brune said in a statement. “This is a concrete and lifesaving effort at a time when the health care system in Gaza has almost collapsed.”

Caritas Jerusalem, which has provided health care assistance in Gaza before, is converting the popemobile so that it can be used to conduct medical examinations, diagnostics and treatment. The mobile clinic — renamed Vehicle of Hope — will be staffed with drivers and medical personnel, and include supplies such as rapid sampling kits, suture kits, syringes, vaccines, oxygen and a medicine refrigerator.

“The converted popemobile is both a health care provider on wheels and a message of hope — a vehicle that can show the world has not forgotten the children of Gaza,” said Cardinal Anders Arborelius, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Stockholm.

Francis’ progressive pontificate focused heavily on world peace, repeatedly calling for ceasefires in conflict zones like Gaza. The pope made phone calls almost every night to Gaza’s only Catholic church, which served as a shelter for Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike. He also made headlines for unveiling a Nativity scene last Christmas in Vatican City that featured baby Jesus in a keffiyeh, the patterned scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian solidarity and liberation.

“I express my closeness to the sufferings of Christians in Palestine and Israel, and to all the Israeli people and the Palestinian people,” Francis said in his Easter speech, one day before he died. “The growing climate of antisemitism throughout the world is worrisome.

“Yet at the same time, I think of the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation,” he continued. “I appeal to the warring parties: call a ceasefire, release the hostages and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.”

The new mobile clinic will be able to enter Gaza once Israel lifts the monthslong humanitarian blockade, though the government has signaled no intention to do such a thing. The bombing combined with the blockade has led some human rights groups, activists, countries and United Nations experts to label the crisis a genocide. The pope himself called for an investigation into the genocide allegations.

The Conclave, where cardinals will vote on who will succeed Francis as pope, begins Wednesday.