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HOLY LAND: Patriarch's plea to UK Catholics
By John Pontifex and John Newton
Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem (right) with Bishop Michael Evans of East Anglia.
The most senior Catholic leader in the Middle East has said that the future of the Church in the Holy Land is now in doubt – unless fellow Christians around the world step up efforts to help them.
During a landmark speech at London’s Westminster Cathedral, Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem stressed that emigration had drastically reduced the numbers of Christians in both Israel and Palestine.
Speaking at Aid to the Church in Need’s event on Tuesday 8th September, the patriarch said that the faithful in Jerusalem were expected to fall from 10,000 today to little more than 5,000 in 2016.
He also said that in the Holy Land as a whole, Christians had declined from 10 percent to two percent within 60 years – although other evidence shows the decline to be even more severe.
The patriarch said that the Pope’s May pilgrimage to the Holy Land had as yet brought no respite to the oppression of minorities there. He told more than 200 friends and benefactors of Aid to the Church in Need that “ongoing discrimination within Israel threatens Christians and Muslims alike”.
He said: “From limiting movement and ignoring housing needs to taxation burdens and infringing on residency rights, Palestinian Christians do not know where to turn.”
Patriarch Twal also spoke out in particular against the wall erected by Israel around the West Bank, saying that as well as hampering freedom of movement, the wall “has enclosed many Palestinians in ghetto-like areas where access to work, medical care, schooling and other basic services has been badly affected.”
He went on: “We have a new generation of Christians who cannot visit the Holy Places of their faith that are only a few kilometres from their place of residence.”
Patriarch Twal paid tribute to the work of Aid to the Church in Need, supporting seminarians and religious Sisters in Bethlehem, families who make olive wood devotional items and initiatives promoting inter-faith cooperation.
Earlier, during the Mass he celebrated in Westminster Cathedral, he said in his homily: “I would like to thank Aid to the Church in Need. We count on your love and your support. Without you, what is our future?”
At the event, he stressed the importance of five ‘P’s – prayer, pilgrimage, pressure [lobbying and other political activism] and projects, all leading towards peace.
Speaking of the need to achieve a lasting settlement in the region, Patriarch Twal said: “If in 61 years we have not been able to find peace, this means that the methods we used were the wrong ones.”
He added: “It seems that politicians are more afraid of peace than of war and they prefer to manage the conflict rather than solve it.”
Patriarch Twal said that in the Occupied Territories, people “are completely at the mercy of the Israeli military, and at present the Gaza Strip is living under an Israeli-imposed siege, that has created a drastic humanitarian crisis.”
But he said he was “cautiously optimistic” because of “the change in tone of the American administration led by President Obama” saying that the new premier “seems much more aware than his predecessors of the fundamental errors of the administration in their attitude to the conflict.”
During his visit to London, the Patriarch also met bishops from England and Wales as well as representatives of organisations including the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and Missio (formerly Pontifical Mission Societies).
Read Patriarch Twal’s homily and talk on our Past Events page