The precious part

The traditional visit to the Holy Land by the Bishops of the Coordination of the Bishops’ Conferences in Support of the Holy Land and the Assembly of the Catholic Bishops of the Holy Land (Hlc 2011) began on January 9th (until 13th) with a visit to the parishes of Nablus and Jericho, in the Palestinian Territories, and is focussed this year on the same theme as that of last October’s Synod, “The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Testimony”. The delegation, composed of about thirty European and North-American bishops and leaders of Bishops’ Conferences and ecclesial bodies, went to Nablus and Jericho, where, after officiating Mass, they met the local congregations to listen to their personal experiences. SIR Europe’s correspondent for the visit is Daniele Rocchi.Walking with the Cross. The parish priest of Jericho, the Syrian-born Franciscan Ibrahim Sabbagh, in greeting the bishops of the delegation, wanted to express his gratitude “for the sympathy and support that you show to the smallest Catholic parish in Palestine (just under 200 devotees, editor’s note) who live in the oldest city in the world. Today, the universal Church visits this small flock. Your solidarity encourages us and strengthens us in our call to be a lively presence in Jesus’ land”. Although small, the parish runs two private schools attended by a total number of over 1,000 students of which, the Franciscan says to SIR Europe, “only 41 are Catholics. All of them are provided with lessons of religion, respectful of their original faiths, for six classes a week”. “Thanks to the schools and to financial supporters such as the Latin Patriarchate and the Custody – points out the priest who has been running the parish for less than two months -, our community is widely respected and appreciated by the local people and the local authorities. Through culture and education, we try to teach dialogue and cohabitation to the young, which is perhaps the best way to face a certain Islamic radicalism that is beginning to be felt in the Palestinian Territories as well. The Egyptian and Iraqi echoes are not so far, after all. Fundamentalist movements aim at conversions to Islam and go even so far as to knock on the doors of the Christians, and this is a source of pain. Then, there are fundamentalist movements among Christians as well. The number of rich, influential Protestant cults that send their missionaries among our devotees and those of the other Churches, spreading divisions and disagreement, is increasing”. Pressures that in some people find a fertile ground where they take root because of a decades-long political and socio-economical crisis that is the source of emigration. Father Sabbagh explains: “Ours is a poor, small Church. Christians experience the social and economic difficulties that are the result of the Israeli military occupation. Going to hospital, going to work is difficult. By fighting to have our rights protected, after years and years we have managed to get permits more easily to get out of the Territories and go and pray in the Holy Places or visit our relatives. Poor and small, but also “rich and strong”. “We are rich and strong, because we are aware of how important our being here is. We are a mark of the universal Church. The presence of bishops from Europe and the US strengthens us in our belief that we are a precious part of the Church, the children of the mother Church of Jerusalem. Our faith embraces the Cross every day, and it is the conditions in which we live every day that reminds us of that. That Cross – he concludes -, which may have been lost by many people in the West who rest on prosperity and on feeling, we still do not know for how much longer, a majority. But richness and feeling part of a majority may sometimes be deceptive”.A youth centre. In Rafidia, a neighbourhood of Nablus, the archbishop of Liverpool, mgr. Patrick Kelly, blessed and then unveiled a youth centre funded by the English diocese and by the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, not least because Saint Oswald’s and Saint Cecilia’s in Liverpool are twin parishes. The parish priest, father Johnny Abu-Khalil, in greeting the delegation led not only by mgr. Kelly but also by the Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, recalled that “the centre is an important step in the attempt to stop the emigration of Christians and will give young people an additional reason to stay. It is an exemplary project that may be reproduced in other parishes of the Palestinian Territories as well. It is a centre that gives young people hope in the future”. The cost of the centre, that involved the rebuilding and renovation of some facilities, was 100 thousand pounds. In unveiling it, mgr. Kelly pointed out that “it is not important to surround oneself only with things one uses, but also with beautiful things. Liverpool cathedral is often used by TV for its beauty, and beauty spreads God’s Word”. At Mass, the archbishop of Liverpool invited the Nablus congregation to pray for mgr. Michael Evans, bishop of East Anglia, who suffers from cancer and has few weeks left to live, and for the victims of the massacre of Tucson, Alexandria and Baghdad.