Year after year, parishes around the world take up the traditional annual Good Friday Collection for the Church in the Holy Land. The proceeds from the Collection go to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. The Franciscans have been caring for the holy sites there since 1209. They also run schools, assist the poor, provide scholarships, and conduct pastoral ministries to keep Christianity alive in the land where it originated. The Collection is still today the principal source which sustains the life and works of the region’s Christians. It helps Christians of many denominations remain in the region as living witnesses to Christ. Christianity in the Middle East, has never had it easy. Today in countries like Iraq, Egypt and Syria where there is war, revolution and religious persecution, the very existence of Christian communities is threatened. The one place where Christians are not suffering from violence is the Holy Land, but Palestinian Christians have been leaving in large numbers for years and are now less than two percent of the population. The decline began with high Jewish immigration and Christian exodus after the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s establishment. Palestinian Christians, once a powerful minority, are becoming the invisible people, squeezed between a growing Muslim majority and the mushrooming Jewish settlements. Israeli restrictions in the occupied West Bank have also persuaded Christians to leave. The concrete and fence barrier Israel built which have successfully kept out 90% of Palestinian attackers has choked cities like Bethlehem and separated Palestinians from their farmlands. Many Palestinian Christians are prohibited from entering Jerusalem except during holidays. Israeli-Palestinian violence has also pushed people to leave, and instances of Islamic extremism have made some Christians feel unwelcome in some cases, though relations with Muslims are generally friendly. The low birthrate of Christians is also a factor in their population decline. Holy sites, like Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, Nazareth, where he grew up, and Jerusalem, where he died and was resurrected, could someday have no local Christians. Religious leaders are afraid these places could become museums for tourists and pilgrims but be absent of Palestinian Christians who have been there from the start. The church offers 350 scholarships a year for Christians, mostly university students, reserving two-thirds for those who commit to stay in the Holy Land. In recent decades, the Church has built apartments and bought land to build more, renting to Christians at discount rates. In his appeal to Catholics to donate generously this Good Friday, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri said this year “presents a still more precious opportunity to become pilgrims of faith after the example of the Holy Father, who in May last year visited this patch of land, so dear to Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. It is a chance to become promoters of dialogue through peace, prayer and sharing of burdens”.
Sources: News.VA, CBS News, Fox News