During Mass in Hebrew, on Sunday 1st June, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who is about to leave his post due to age, greeted the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community (qehilla). "Like all the Church of Jerusalem said Sabbah , you too are a small community. Only Christ is great even if He is not accepted in His land, neither in Israel nor in Palestine, yet. We Christians are called to be His witnesses in this land". "Every believer’s belonging to his people is a matter of course he added , and all of us, you as a Jewish community belonging to the Jewish people and the Palestinian Christians, have the same task, to contribute to the building of our societies". According to Sabbah, "none of these needs our mercy or words of pity, but a prayer for justice and peace is essential" to give what "is fair and owed to the Israeli society, so that it may live in peace and security, recognised by everybody, and to the Palestinian society, so that it will benefit of the same security, peace and recognition". "As to our role in the Church of Jerusalem and in its 13 churches he concluded , let’s pray for unity". The Hebrew-speaking Catholic communities count a few hundreds of devotees and are present in the main Jewish cities, such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beer Sheba as well as Jerusalem.. (dnr)” “
