Pope Leo XIV has praised the willingness to forgive after the mother of slain American journalist James Foley told a Vatican vigil about meeting an ISIS fighter convicted over his beheading.
Diane Foley was one of the featured speakers at the vigil service in St Peter’s Basilica on Monday, on the eve of a Holy Year event honouring all those who suffer. Leo, history's first American pope, thanked Mrs Foley for her testimony.
James Foley was among a group of mostly western journalists and aid workers taken hostage and later killed by a group of British-born ISIS militants in Syria during the group’s reign of terror.
The militants, who became known as “the Beatles” because of their British accents, released a grisly video showing Foley’s beheading in 2014, saying it was retribution for US air strikes in Iraq.
In a 2024 book, Diane Foley recounted the face-to-face encounters she had with Alexanda Kotey, the British-born militant who was charged in connection with his death. On Monday, she told how they had helped her to heal from the altar of St Peter’s, becoming tearful at times and clutching her hand to her chest.
After her son was killed, she said anger and bitterness surged within her, and she asked God how he could have allowed it to happen.
“I staggered under the weight of that loss, unsure if I could go on,” she said. “In those dark moments I prayed desperately for the grace not to become bitter, but to be forgiving and merciful.” She said her meetings with Kotey “became moments of grace”.
“The holy spirit allowed us both to listen to each other, to cry, to share our stories. Alexanda expressed much remorse. God gave me the grace to see him as a fellow sinner in need of mercy, like me,” she said.
The Pope said: “The testimonies we have heard speak of a truth: that pain must not give rise to violence and that violence never has the final say, for it is conquered by a love that knows how to forgive.
“What greater freedom can we hope to achieve than that which comes from forgiveness?”
Nearly four years after Foley’s murder at the age of 40, Kotey and co-defendant El Shafee Elsheikh were captured by a Kurdish-led, US-backed militia. An American drone strike killed the militant who carried out Foley’s murder, Mohammed Emwazi, also known as “Jihadi John”.
After legal wrangling, the pair were taken to the US for prosecution in 2020 after the Justice Department agreed to not seek the death penalty as punishment. Kotey was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to eight offences relating to the abduction, torture and beheading of ISIS hostages in Syria.
