With the beginning of September 2024, some 12,000 youngsters of the Terra Sancta School of the Custody of the Holy Land began the new school year. A message of peace comes for them and from them. “Our  mission is to educate for peace. Our schools are laboratories of peace,” said Fra Ibrahim Faltas, the Custody Vicar and director of all the 18 schools of the Custody.

From the very first day and every day, the school activities begin with Christians and Muslims, pupils and teachers, reciting together the “simple prayer”, attributed to St Francis and repeating the words, “Make me an instrument of Your peace.”

Words (and balloons) of peace in Jerusalem

On 2 September, the appointment was for 7.30 a.m. in the courtyard of the Terra Sancta High School in Jerusalem. About 400 pupils make a call for peace, which echoes in their messages and which is written on some white balloons, released into the sky before they go into the classrooms. In his greetings, Fra Ibrahim Faltas asked them to “start from the very beginning to study, because this is working for peace, being men and women of peace.” Their thoughts go to Gaza, where the young people have missed the school year and the schools have been reduced to rubble. “If we want a better future we have to work  with our children for peace,” said Fra Ibrahim. During the morning, the director visited the children in the nursery school and the pupils of the primary school at Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem.

The “Lord’s graces” at Beit Hanina

On the same morning, Fra Paulo Paulista and the pupils of the Terra Sancta School of Beit Hanina,  an Arab neighbourhood in Jerusalem, welcomed with joy the visit from Fra Ibrahim Faltas. “I arrived as Director last year, my first appointment, and a month later, war broke out,” Fra Paulo relates. “It was a time of ordeal, but the Lord gave me an abundance of grace.” His eyes light up when he speaks about the students of the “Helen Keller” – a school for children with special problems, taken over in 2016 by the Custody and now part of the Schools of the Terra Sancta- who took part in the World Children’s Day, in Rome and met the Pope. At the start of the new year, Fra Paulo invited the pupils to  “put our life, our families and this country into the hands of God, so that the war can come to an end.” 

New beginnings in Ramleh

The beginning of the school year in Ramleh  was marked by the inauguration of the premises which from this year will house  the nursery school and the first three years of the primary school, while the classes from the fourth grade to the twelfth (9 – 19 years) were already present). The ceremony was held on 3 September, in the presence of some directors of the  Terra Sancta Schools, religious and civil representatives of the city of Ramleh, as well as of all the pupils. After the ribbon was cut, Fra Ibrahim Faltas blessed the new classrooms. He school with almost 300 years of history, is a laboratory of dialogue in the heart of one of the main “mixed cities” in Israel. “Our purpose is to educate and meet the others,” said the director, Fra Abdel Masih Fahim. “This year, we are working on the topic of the encounter, practical work.: the encounter with God, with oneself and with those who are different from us.” Ronen Azaria, director-general of the Municipality of  Ramleh, who spoke at the ceremony, stressed how “the contribution of the Terra Sancta School is not only at scholastic level but also at the level of civil conscience, in a city with inhabitants and communities that are so different.

A hope for Bethlehem

“Holy Land, the love for our homeland,” is the motto proposed this year to the pupils of the    Terra Sancta School in Bethlehem , who began lessons of 29 August. The director,  Fra George Haddad, welcomed more than 1,200 pupils, recalling the importance of study: “There are youngsters who have lost everything and have not been able to go to school since last year. Our presence  at school is a way to defend and love our land. It is an opportunity to build up a future full of hope.”  The school has to support many families who cannot pay the fees, as the consequence of a war which has brought above all unemployment. “Our objective as Franciscan friars is to preserve the right to education  and to take this message to every child. We continue to give because it is a blessing of the Father, and in our turn we give others this blessing.”