Vatican, 05 May, 2025 / 9:37 pm (ACI Africa).
Before his death, Pope Francis donated one of his popemobiles to be converted into a mobile clinic to assist children in Gaza, one of the communities hardest hit by the war and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.
According to Peter Brune, secretary general of Caritas Sweden and one of the project's driving forces, this is the Popemobile that the Pontiff used during his visit to Bethlehem in May 2014, during his historic trip to the Holy Land . "Since then, the vehicle has been on display in a public square in the Palestinian city," he said.
"The Popemobile has been refurbished and upgraded to fulfill a new and hopeful mission: providing medical assistance to injured and malnourished children who currently have no access to any type of healthcare," Brune explained.
The initiative was personally entrusted by the Pope to Caritas Jerusalem in the final months of his life to respond to the grave humanitarian emergency in Gaza, where nearly one million children are displaced, without access to food, clean water, or basic medical care, amid the conflict with Israel.
Under the name Vehicle of Hope, the popemobile is being equipped with essential medical instruments: rapid diagnostic kits, suture materials, syringes, vaccines, oxygen, refrigerated medications, and other vital supplies.
