
Christmas came early in Gaza City. On Sunday, December 22, for the first time in many months, in the southern Zeitoun district, Mousa Ayyad no longer felt in danger. Despite harsh living conditions in the church in the Gaza Strip where he had taken refuge since the start of the war launched in retaliation for the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the administrative coordinator of the Al-Ahli Arabi hospital was “happy” and even “reassured about his safety,” for a few hours at least.
On that day, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, accompanied by his deputy, Davide Melli, two nuns, and a convoy of cars from the Catholic NGO Caritas, visited the 500 Christians stranded in the enclave.
In the religious compound, Pope Francis’ representative in the region spent the night among members of the congregation, between moments of prayer and discussions “about the end of death and famine,” he said via WhatsApp. The Israeli army continues to prohibit access to Palestinian territory for foreign journalists.
In the Holy Family Church, the patriarch also celebrated a Christmas mass, two days before the traditional ceremony held each year in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. In his homily, the Italian archbishop sought to reassure his congregation, reeling from 14 months of bloody conflict in which more than 45,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians: “Sooner or later,” he reassured them, “the war will end, and we will rebuild everything: our schools, our hospitals and our homes. We must be resilient and full of strength.”
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