The superstar Madonna has urged Pope Leo XIV to visit the Gaza Strip and “bring his light” to the children there “before it is too late.”

The singer pleaded on Instagram: “We need the humanitarian gates to be fully opened to save these innocent children. As a mother, I cannot bear to watch their suffering.”

Relations between Catholics and Jews are always fragile and often fraught.

After the history of the church’s murderous persecution of Jews in medieval Europe and the refusal by Pope Pius XII to denounce the Nazis, the church tried to repair relations through its penitential Nostra Aetate declaration in 1965.

Things went backward under Pope Francis, who died in April and was profoundly hostile to Israel. Although it was hoped that his successor, Leo XIV, would be an improvement

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