JERUSALEM – The Franciscan Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who has served as the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem since 2020, has emerged as one of the top candidates to succeed the late Pope Francis.

The conclave will select the new Pope in Rome for the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics on Wednesday.

The Jesuit Pope Francis made Pizzaballa a cardinal in September 2023. The following month, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, slaughtered more than 1,200 people and took more than 250 people hostage. Just a few weeks later, Pizzaballa declared he would offer himself as a hostage to the jihad terrorist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of children kidnapped by the radical Islamists.

Firefighters place the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel where cardinals will gather to elect the new pope at the Vatican on Friday, May 2. (AP/Gregorio Borgia)

He added, “The visits to the stables, where I was sent to fetch milk, the joy of riding in the horse-drawn carts to go make hay, the simple country games, and so on. It was a simple and genuine world, and a sober and happy life. Only with time did I realize how that world would influence me by giving me a style and pursuit of sobriety and sincerity.”

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has known Pizzaballa since the turn of the new century in 2000 and praised Pizzaballa’s “fluid, eloquent Hebrew.”

Herzog previously said, “He is a brilliant person. He is a leader knowledgeable and extremely well acquainted with the complexities of our region and enjoys the trust of all the concerned parties in Jordan, the Palestinian Territories and Israel. They respect him tremendously. His name precedes him.”

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, arrives at the Church of the Nativity, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, on Christmas Eve in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on Sunday, Dec. 24, 2023. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

However, Pizzabella caused a row with Israel’s government when he signed a statement urging Israel to “avoid killing innocent people” in its campaign to oust the U.S.-designated terrorist entity Hamas in Gaza. 

From the Israeli perspective, the statement failed to blast Hamas’s massacre. Pizzaballa walked back his support for the statement and declared Hamas’s massacre as “unacceptable and incomprehensible barbarity.”