The pastor of only one Catholic parish in the entire world has an unusual experience almost every day. He receives a telephone call from Pope Francis, even when the pope is hospitalized, to check on things and to offer encouragement.
The pastor serves Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where so much turmoil has occurred recently, and chronically for generations.
Before the war, about 800,000 people lived in Gaza, a narrow piece of land surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea on its west, Israel on its north and east, and Egypt on its south. Overwhelmingly the people are Muslim, of the Sunni tradition.
Less than 1,000 are Roman Catholics. A few more are Orthodox Christians. Protestants are rare. Holy Family serves the Roman Catholics. The parish used to have a school, run by religious sisters, enrolling about 500 children.
Centuries of turmoil in the Holy Land
Life in Gaza now is horrible, but Christians in the Holy Land have had a hard time for centuries. For more than a millennium, the entire area was part of the Turkish empire, which was staunchly, militantly Muslim. Minorities of whatever description — racial, religious, economic — often face hostility from majorities, but Christians in the land blessed by the footprints of Jesus seldom have known a day without being targets of resentment.
Things moderated, at least officially, after the First World War, when the Turkish empire collapsed. Britain took control of the land, including Gaza. Britain is a Christian nation, with a Christian tradition, although its Roman Catholic heritage halted 400 years ago when King Henry VIII created a church separate from the papacy. British authorities were much less likely to make life difficult for Christians, including Catholics.
In 1948, as it divested itself of most of its worldwide empire, Britain left Palestine. The United Nations divided the land between Jews and Arabs. Jews came together and formed the independent state of Israel. Arabs, most of them Muslim, refused to cooperate.
Many, but not all, of the problems that have made the area an everlasting cauldron of violence and hatred began at that time. And Christians, almost all of whom are Arabs, have been caught in the middle.
Christians caught in the middle
The Israeli government carefully has not moved directly against the Christian population. Israel sends an ambassador to the Holy See, and the pope sends a permanent official representative, or nuncio, to Israel.
Israeli officials refuse to take sides in arguments among the Christian communities, mainly Roman Catholics and various groups of Orthodox Christians. (Protestants are not much of a factor.) These squabbles present their own problems.
Four popes have visited Israel, received with honor and respect by the country’s leaders. Israeli leaders have visited the Vatican, met with all deference. When Pope St. John Paul II died in 2005, the president of Israel, the country’s official head, attended the papal funeral.
For Muslim Arabs, the fact that Western Catholics have often been pro-Palestinian Arab in the disputes that eternally occur has somewhat dulled their anti-Christian feeling.
Nevertheless, the multiple unresolved disputes between Jews and Arabs have complicated life for Christians in the Holy Land. They are a small minority, with a past, a culture, and attitudes of their own, trapped between two bitter, angry factions, Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, who do not understand them and who see them as out of step with both Judaism and Islam and linked to powerful outsiders.
The Christian population throughout Israel and the Palestinian territory has long been declining in numbers, some fleeing to this country, many to Europe. Being different — and the unceasing fighting and depth of hatred in both quarrelling sides — make earning a livelihood and simply living life difficult.
As for Gaza itself, warfare has left much of it in ruins. Christian sites have been bombed, including the Orthodox church in Gaza.
The pope’s calls are a ray of sunshine for the weary, despondent Catholics.
