Sign of hope” “

“With this visit, the bishops hope to gain a better understanding and share the difficulties of the populations of these territories as a tangible sign of the whole Church for solidarity with the populations of the Holy Land and in particular for our Catholic brothers and sisters”. That’s how Monsignor PETER FLEETWOOD, assistant secretary of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE), explains the significance of the visit that, this year too, a delegation of some thirty bishops and representatives of European and North American Bishops’ Conferences and ecclesial organizations, including Fleetwood himself, will make to the Christians and Churches present in the Holy Land from 14 to 19 January. Organized on an annual basis by the Coordination of the Bishops’ Conferences in support of the Church of the Holy Land and the Assembly of the Catholic bishops of the Holy Land, this year’s visit will also extend to Jordan, where the participants hope to meet, for the first time, the King of Jordan Abdullah. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. This coordination of European and American bishops, supported by the Holy See, began several years ago, following in the footsteps of two illustrious pilgrims to the region, Paul VI and John Paul II. Its aim is to share the life of the local Churches and examine their communion with the mother Church of Jerusalem. The origins of this particular coordination can be traced back to the 1990s when the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the USA worked in close contact with the Church in the Holy Land on issues concerning in particular the future of Jerusalem. In 1997 the US Bishops asked the European Bishops’ Conferences to share its commitment to supporting the Church in the Holy Land. The coordination thus began. It has made a visit of solidarity annually to the Holy Land since 1998. FRIENDSHIP. Today, in this land that continues to yearn for peace, justice and reconciliation, the joint North American/European church delegation wishes to be a tangible sign of the solidarity that our Churches feel for the Christians of the Holy Land and of friendship with the Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian peoples. It is no accident that following these various visits, a growth of pilgrimages of many particular European churches to these territories has been registered: a sign of hope and a source of joy for their populations martyred by situations of injustice and terrorism. THE PROGRAMME. This year’s delegation will begin its journey to the Holy Land by meeting the youth of Caritas in Ramallah. Meetings with the Palestinian and Israeli authorities, and various meetings with the local populations, young priests and seminarians, are planned in the following days. A high point of the visit will be the public celebration of Mass in the Basilica of the Nativity at Bethlehem, on Monday 16 January. From there the bishops will travel to Amman, where the delegation is expected to meet the king of Jordan for the first time. There they will discuss the situation of the country and of the various Christian churches present there. The visit will end in Jerusalem on Thursday 19 January with meetings with the Israeli and Palestinian authorities, a press conference and a celebration with the Melchite community. THE OBJECTIVES. The bishops’ coordination plans to support numerous tasks: from the twinning of dioceses and parishes to the pastoral care of Palestinian immigrants abroad, from the growth of the attention that the media pay to these territories to the fostering of relations between the delegation and the Israeli and Palestinian government representatives in the delegation’s member countries, from financial support to schools to the holding of special collections. “Responsibility for the coordination – explains Fleetwood – has now been transferred to Monsignor Patrick Kelly of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. He speaks of the Church of Jerusalem as the ‘Mother Church’, for which we wish to show our deep affection and for which we have promised to work tirelessly so long as it needs our moral and material support”. In what have now become annual visits, continues the CCEE assistant secretary, “the members of the coordination look not only to Jerusalem but to the whole of the Holy Land, for example to the Palestinian territories, to the Christians holding Israeli citizenship in Galilee, and to our brothers and sisters in Jordan. None of the members returns from these visits without having deepened his knowledge not only of the facts, but also of the faces and lives of so many people. And for me – concludes Monsignor Fleetwood – it’s a sign of real hope that they succeed in bringing back to their own countries information of great importance that rarely appears in our daily papers”.