HOLY LAND: Building a firm foundation for a Christian future
By John Pontifex
Maronite Archbishop Paul Sayah of Haifa and the Holy Land
A new initiative in the Holy Land is aiming to heal the wounds of religious division and stem the Christian exodus from the region.
The new four-storey Good Shepherd Maronite Diocesan Pastoral Centre is currently under construction in Mount Carmel, northern Israel. Once completed, it will be used as a place for residential retreats, conferences, counselling services and gatherings for youngsters of different religions.
The centre, which has received major funding from organisations including Aid to the Church in Need, is due to open by the end of 2011. It will be the first diocesan-wide centre for the Holy Land’s Maronite-rite Catholics, who number 12,000 in total.
In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Maronite Archbishop Paul Sayah of Haifa and the Holy Land said the main aim of the project was to help renew the confidence of Maronites and other Christians and dissuade them from emigrating.
Describing the pastoral centre as “the backbone of our pastoral infrastructure”, Archbishop Sayah said: “We have experienced over the years many Christians wanting to emigrate. They feel they are not valued.
“We have to make sure that they feel they have a role to play as well as opportunities for educational and spiritual formation. The Good Shepherd Centre aims to do just that.”
The archbishop went on to say that the complex had received the strong backing of the Druze, a religious group derived from Islam, who are the majority population in Isfya, the village where the centre is being built.
Archbishop Sayah said: “The Mayor of Isfya – a Druze – is very keen on having the centre. A number of Druze leaders in the area have signed a document in support of the project. We have told them that the centre will be available for them to use.”
The initiative aims to promote Christian-Druze relations – which hit a low in February 2005 in Mughar, also in northern Israel. A dispute in the town in the Galilee region led the Druze to go on the rampage causing half the Christian population to run for their lives. Many have since returned but some problems remain.
Archbishop Sayah stressed the importance of encouraging the Christians’ sense of self-worth.
He said: “It is no use our just preaching at our Christian community. We have to educate and develop them so that they can have good relationships with people of other religions. Otherwise our community will not survive.”
The scheme, which has already received £13,400 from Aid to the Church in Need with the expectation of more to come, includes two dormitories, supervisors’ rooms, a refectory, a chapel, a conference room, a bishop’s flat and rooms for counselling.
The archbishop said much of the funding was now in place for the scheme, which will cost just under US$2 million, but added that more support was urgently needed.
He said: “We are keeping costs down as much as possible. In getting the work done, we are involving our own communities which has the advantage of being cheaper than getting outside help as well as providing local employment and generating support from the very people the centre is there to help.”
Maronites are one of the smaller Catholic communities in a region where the Christian population has been decimated by emigration, especially in the West Bank.
According to figures released in May by Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin-rite Patriarch of Jerusalem, Christians in Palestine today number barely 50,000.
Pope Benedict XVI has called on Aid to the Church in Need to prioritise support for Christians in the Middle East, noting that in some regions the “local Churches are… threatened in their very existence”.
Aid to the Church in Need is organising a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in November 2010, in association with Pax Travel. Find out more about our Holy Land pilgrimage