San Antonio archbishop regrets ‘confusion and misunderstanding’ over Israel tweets
"The archbishop deeply regrets that posts in recent days on the war in Gaza have caused confusion and misunderstanding."
Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio has removed a number of posts on twitter.com, after some commenters argued that his statements were antisemitic.
“The archbishop deeply regrets that posts in recent days on the war in Gaza have caused confusion and misunderstanding in some and has removed a few of the comments,” said Jordan McMorrough, director of communications for the Archdiocese of San Antonio.
“Archbishop Gustavo has preached strongly and emphatically against anti-Semitism through the years, including many public statements in the media abhorring anti-Semitic acts,” McMorrough told The Pillar May 9.
McMorrough pointed to the archbishop’s role in the city’s Hanukkah luncheon each year, hosted by the local Jewish and Catholic communities.
García-Siller has drawn criticism for a series of social media posts on May 7, in which he criticized the ongoing Israeli military action in Gaza, begun after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023.
Some of the posts, which came one day after Yom HaShoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, were inflammatory or unclear.
In one post, the archbishop called on “Jewish brothers and sisters” to “stop killing Palestinians.”
The post drew numerous comments from people criticizing the archbishop for conflating the Israeli government with Jewish people.
In another post, García-Siller asserted that “The Holocaust was already forgotten for Jews and everyone else.”
Both of these posts were removed by the morning of May 9.
While the archdiocese emphasized its removal in response to questions from The Pillar, it did not clarify what Garcia-Siller intended to communicate in his social media stating the Holocaust had been forgotten
The archbishop’s twitter.com account still contains posts calling for peace in the Middle East, including one post referencing violence between “the Israelites” and the Palestinians.
An initial response from the archdiocesan communications department on Wednesday stressed that García-Siller’s account on twitter.com is a “personal account,” rather than an official communications organ of the archdiocese.
The communications department reached out to The Pillar on Thursday with the additional response.
McMorrough said that García-Siller “has consistently called for an end to violence in Gaza and around the world.”
“Archbishop Gustavo invites everyone to join him in praying for healing for all those who have been harmed and injured in this devastating conflict, and for the repose of the souls of those who have died so tragically,” he said.
Since the mass-casualty terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7 and following the Israeli government’s military operations in Gaza, Catholic leaders have repeatedly denounced the violence, while also warning against rising antisemitism.
This week is not the first time García-Siller has sparked controversy on social media.
Last year, the archbishop posted on twitter.com that the government should not be involved in people’s decisions about having children, leading to criticism that his comments seemed to resemble the rhetoric of abortion advocates. An archdiocesan spokesperson later clarified that the archbishop was referring to governmental actions that infringe on parents’ rights to raise their children. The post was later deleted from social media.
And in 2019, García-Siller walked back a twitter.com post accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of racism.
In an August 2019 thread, he urged Trump: “President stop hate and racism, starting with yourself.”
After deleting that social media thread, the archbishop explained in a statement that: “I regret that my recent Tweet remarks were not focused on the issues but on an individual. All individuals have God-given dignity and should be accorded respect and love as children of God, especially in our conversations and interactions.”
“We should be aware of this in our discourse about the Office of the President of the United States, which is due our respect,” said the archbishop.
If his X account is a personal account utterly unconnected to his episcopacy and the archdiocese (a weird and problematic assertion), why is the archdiocesan spokesman giving the apology and not the archbishop himself?
This is on the level of saying, "I am sorry that people were offended" instead of "I'm sorry that I said an offensive thing". Not even close to a real apology. The archbishop doesn't regret the anti-Semitic and half-literate tweets, he regrets that some people took offense to them.