Pope Francis paid special attention to the Holy Land from the very first moments of his pontificate. The Holy Land was the destination of his first apostolic journey outside Italy (if we exclude his participation in the World Youth Day in Brazil, a trip which had already been planned for his predecessor). 

 

Since then he never failed to show his closeness to this land and the peoples who live there, with messages and audiences, with the appointment of some of its children in roles of responsibility in the Church (including the choice of the Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa as  cardinal ), up to the heartfelt calls for peace in the months marked by the war and the particular affection for the small Catholic community of Gaza.

 

A pilgrim in the Holy Land

From 24 to 26 May 2014,  Pope Francis made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in the footsteps of is predecessors and on the 50th anniversary of the meeting – in Jerusalem – between Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople Athenagoras. At the Holy Sepulchre, Francis and Bartholomew I renewed that embrace, as part of an  Ecumenical celebration,  the first hosted in the church of the Resurrection – as the Orthodox like to call it. Together they recited the Lord’s Prayer and knelt in prayer in front of the tomb of Jesus.

 

In his pilgrimage, Pope Francis touched on the main holy places in Jordan, in Bethlehem and Jerusalem (see the photo gallery at the end of the article). He celebrated Mass in Manger Square in  Bethlehem, at  Gethsemane and at the Cenacle. He was also able to make an exception to the protocol, to have lunch with the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land at St Saviour’s convent.

 

In the Holy Land, Pope Francis pronounced words and made gestures of peace: a visit to Yad Vashem (the Memorial of the Shoah), a prayer at the Western Wall, his meetings with the Mufti and with the Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis. There were also some impromptu events: the stops at the wall that divides Bethlehem from Jerusalem and at the memorial to Israeli victims of terrorism, and the historic invitation to the Palestinian and Israeli Presidents to a meeting of peace.

 

Sowing peace

The meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and Shimon Peres in the Vatican Gardens, on 8 June 2014, was a first tangible fruit of the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land. That day was one of the most significant gestures of peace of Francis’s pontificate. 

 

More than ten years later, the words pronounced then are more prophetic than ever: “Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation;  yes to sincerity and no to duplicity. All of this takes courage, it takes strength and tenacity.”

 

Care of the Holy Places

The attention of the Holy See to the Holy Land has been shown with two generous  donations, as contributions to the restoration in the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem and in the Holy Sepulchre  in Jerusalem. The contributions were made available through the Custody of the Holy Land, which since 1342 according to papal wishes, has been the custodian of the Holy Places of Christianity.

 

Another concrete gesture of closeness was the gift to the Custody of a small piece of the  Relic of the Holy Crib  of the Child Jesus. The relic, donated by St Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Theodore I (642-649) is kept in Rome, in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. 

 

“The Holy Father hopes that the message of peace announced by the angels on Christmas night to men loved by God, which for two thousand years has echoed from Bethlehem, brings the gift of peace and reconciliation our world still greatly needs,” wrote Cardinal Stanislao Rylko, Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in the letter of accompaniment. The relic arrived in Bethlehem on 30 November 2019, for the start of Advent.

 

Anniversaries and audiences

The Franciscans have celebrated a number of anniversaries in these ten years which have always been accompanied by messages or meetings with the Pope.  Starting from the letter sent for the 800th anniversary of the presence of the Franciscans  in the Holy Land as custodians of the Holy Places: “I wish to renew this mandate, encouraging you to be joyful witnesses of the Risen Christ in the Holy Land.” 

 

A  letter also arrived for the  800th anniversary of the Franciscan Rule  : “For St Francis, the Gospel was at the centre of his existence; and the Church approved its intention, handing it back to him and to all you Franciscans like a text that no longer only expresses  the spiritual intuition of a Founder, but a form of life”.

 

In 2021, Francis personally signed a  Letter to the Custos of the Holy Land on the 600th anniversary of the establishment of the Commissariats of the Holy Land. “After all these centuries, the mission of the Commissaries is still up to date: to support, encourage and give value to the mission of the Custody of the Holy Land, making possible a network of ecclesial, spiritual and charitable relations that have as their focal point the land where Jesus lived. I support and bless this precious service,” the Pope wrote.

 

One year later, in January 2022, the Pope  received  in the Vatican a delegation of “communicators” of the Custody of the Holy Land, on the centenary of the foundation of the magazine Terrasanta. In January 2024, he received a delegation of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (SBF) of Jerusalem, today the Faculty of Biblical and Archaeological Studies of the Pontifical Antonianum University of Rome, on the occasion of the centenary of its foundation.

 

Beloved Syria

Syria, also the Holy Land and part of the mission of the Custody, has always occupied a special place in Pope Francis’s heart. This is shown by a letter sent in 2018 to the Franciscans of the Custody, Hanna Jallouf and Louai Bsharat, who were facing the harsh reality of the Islamic State: “I wish to share your suffering and tell you that I am close to you and the Christian communities who are so exhausted by the pain experienced in the faith in Jesus Christ.”

 

On 17 December, Fra Hanna received the “Flower of Gratitude”  prize  from Pope Francis in the Vatican. A few months later, he was nominated  Apostolic Vicar   of Aleppo of the Latins. Pope Francis also canonized the  “Martyrs of Damascus” , eight Franciscan friars and three Maronite laymen, killed in hatred of the faith in Damascus in 1860.

 

In Cyprus, again in the Holy Land

From 2 to 4 December 2021, Pope Francis made an apostolic journey to  Cyprus . The island, evangelized by St Paul and St Barnabas, is considered part of the Holy Land for this reason. With today’s Holy Land, it also shares the political and religious wounds, including the presence of a wall which cuts the island in two. Various communities of the Custody are also present here. On 26 January 2024, the new seat of the Apostolic Nunciature  was inaugurated in Nicosia.

 

“Here in Cyprus I feel something of that atmosphere typical of the Holy Land, where antiquity and the variety of Christian traditions enrich every pilgrim. This is good for me, and it is also encouraging to meet communities of believers who live in the present with hope and openness to the future, and who share this greater vision with those most in need,” said the Pope at the Mass . And it was from Cyprus that he wanted to send a message  of hope to the young people in the Holy Land. 

 

A tireless peace-builder

It is impossible to count the calls by Pope Francis for peace in the Holy Land. Not only during his visit but also in the years following it, at every  crisis he never failed to say a word or make an appeal so that weapons are quiet and the way of dialogue and peace is sought.

 

From the very start of the war in Gaza, he raised his  voice, often not listened to and solitary, to implore peace: “The attacks and the weapons must stop, please, and it must be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any solution, but only to the death and suffering of many innocent people. War is a defeat: every war is a defeat!”

 

The small Catholic community of Gaza, about a thousand people who have almost all sought refuge in the parish of the Holy Family, has found a father in Pope Francis. During the conflict, every evening, he reached them with a message or a phone call, a word of comfort. Even from hospital, during his last stay, he continued to call, to give comfort but certainly also to receive the consolation of those poor people he wanted to put at the centre of his pontificate.