Archbishop of Canterbury and pope focus on Gaza in Christmas messages

The archbishop of Canterbury and the pope are using their Christmas addresses to show solidarity with Bethlehem and those caught up in the Israel-Gaza war.

Referring to Jesus Christ’s birthplace, which is now in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Justin Welby will say “the skies of Bethlehem are full of fear rather than angels and glory”.

He will also draw comparisons to the turbulent conditions of Jesus’s birth and the current plight of children in the conflict-hit region.

“Today a crying child is in a manger somewhere in the world, nobody willing or able to help his parents who desperately need shelter,” Welby will say in a sermon at Canterbury Cathedral. “Or in an incubator, in a hospital low on electricity, like Al-Ahli [hospital] in Gaza, surrounded by conflict.

“Maybe he lies in a house that still bears the marks of the horrors of 7 October, with family members killed, and a mother who feared for her life.”

In his sermon he will also refer to victims of conflicts in Ukraine and Sudan, saying: “So many parts of the world seem beset with violence.”

Commitment to “serving, not in being served” is needed to resolve problems of climate change, terrorism, economic inequality and “the desperation and ambitions that drive more and more to migration”, he will add.

The archbishop will also pay tribute to King Charles, whose coronation he led this year, for providing leadership through service.

“Two thousand years later, at a coronation, it seemed natural and right for a king in royal robes to answer a child, ‘I come not to be served, but to serve’ – and we know it to be his intention, the right way to be a king,” he will say.

It has been reported that Welby will be knighted by the king for his “personal service” to the crown, being admitted to the Royal Victorian Order in the new year honours list.

On Sunday night, Pope Francis also spoke of the Israel-Hamas conflict in his Christmas Eve homily and lamented that Jesus’s message of peace was being drowned out by conflict in the land where he was born.

“Tonight, our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once more rejected by the futile logic of war, by the clash of arms that even today prevents him from finding room in the world,” Francis said during the service at St Peter’s Basilica.

The pope has made appeals for a ceasefire in the conflict and has called for the release of all hostages held by Palestinian militant groups.

The 87-year-old pontiff spoke hours after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to fight deeper into the Gaza after his troops endured one of the worst days of losses of their ground war.

At the papal mass for 6,500 people in St Peter’s Basilica, with more watching on screens in the square outside, Pope Francis said the real message of Christmas was peace and love and he urged people not to be obsessed with worldly success and the “idolatry of consumerism”.

He also spoke of “the all-too-human thread that runs through history: the quest for worldly power and might, fame and glory, which measures everything in terms of success, results, numbers and figures, a world obsessed with achievement”.

Francis said that while many might found it hard to celebrate Christmas in “this world that is so judgmental and unforgiving”, they should try to remember what happened on the first Christmas. “Tonight, love changes history,” he said.

Pope Francis will deliver his Christmas Day “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) message and blessing later on Monday.