Tel Aviv, Israel:

Pope Francis met on Monday with relatives of several Israelis taken hostage by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack.

The 87-year-old pope had previously met with a group of relatives of the hostages at the Vatican in November, the same day he met with Palestinians who have family in Gaza.

Members of five Israeli families met privately with Francis on Monday and showed him posters of relatives who had been taken away, including Ariel and Kofir Bibas, aged four and one.

Also among the hostages are 19-year-old Tamir Nimrodi, 22-year-old Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 19-year-old Agam Berger Berger and Omri Miran,

Berger’s cousin, Ashley Waxman, said afterwards that the meeting was “very emotional” and “very powerful.”

She told a news conference that the pope “called Hamas evil, and they are evil… and he knows very well that the hostages need to go home.”

Gilboa-Dalal’s mother, Merav, said “there has been no day or night for me” since he was taken hostage at a music festival on October 7.

“My heart is broken. I can barely breathe. I’m paralyzed with fear. Where is my guy? Where? When is my guy going to come home?”

The Oct. 7 attack killed 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have also taken more than 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, 129 of whom remain in Gaza. The Israeli military said 34 missing persons were still dead.

In the six months since the attack, Israeli retaliatory bombings and ground offensives have killed at least 33,175 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry run by Hamas in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Speaking after weekly Sunday prayers at the Vatican, the pope reiterated his call for peace.

“Let us always pray for peace, a just and lasting peace, especially for the martyrs of Ukraine, Palestine and Israel,” he said.

The Israelis came to Italy as part of a delegation that included Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz.

Katz met with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Sunday, the six-month anniversary of Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.

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