Middle East is home to the first Christian communities in the history of the Catholic Church. But the homeland of Middle Eastern Christians, and the Holy Land of all Christians, has largely lost its Catholic character over the centuries – both in the religions widely practiced there and in the general violence between those religions.
While Muslims, Jews and Christians once lived in peace for centuries in this region of the world, the modern era has ushered in conflicts of political ambitions, religious ideologies and genocidal grudges that make the peace apparently impossible. Added to this, in these days of blood and fire, is the apparently possible objective of the tactical and total eradication of Christians from the Holy Land.
Christians compose only a tiny margin in Gaza – around 1,000 souls, including 400 Catholics. These are declining figures since Israel implemented a restrictive and isolating blockade in 2007 in response to Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip. Nevertheless, the territory remains the cradle of Christianity and Catholicism, and these roots can still serve as avenues of grace and salvation, even if this population is threatened like never before.
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At the time of writing, the Palestinian death toll reached nearly 30,000 people. Two million people were displaced following Hamas’s unspeakable attack last October, which killed 1,200 Israelis and left 250 captured as hostages. Amid this pain, several terrible blows have been dealt to the Catholic presence in this region over the past four months. Although reports indicate an alarming indiscriminate approach by the Israeli Defense Forces, the current trend of Christian targeting suggests that Christian sites are in fact being targeted by Israeli forces, sending the chilling message that, Hamas or not, no one Gaza is not safe.
Although the number of Christians is low in Gaza, 3 percent of Gaza’s Christians are reported to have died since the invasion. And the toll of destruction and damage to Christian sites is indeed devastating. Some predict that the Palestinian Christian population will be entirely wiped out for the first time in 2,000 years. Such a tragedy could potentially fall into Israeli propaganda narratives against Hamas, claiming that jihadist persecution extends to Christians as well as Jews. This could be a tactical way to gain Western support and sympathy, although their apparent efforts to wipe out even Gaza’s Christians have not remained as secretive as such a strategy would require.
The Sisters of the Holy Rosary school in Jerusalem was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike. In northern Gaza, a Byzantine church was shaken and destroyed by Israeli attacks. And the first Christian monastery built in Palestine – called the Green Sanctuary, in Deir al-Balah, and dating from the Byzantine era – was also damaged.
Explosive destruction was inflicted in a missile attack on the parking lot of the region’s only Christian hospital – the Anglican-run Al-Ahli Hospital – in which hundreds of people were killed and injured. The third oldest Christian site in the world, the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyry, was bombed while protecting Christians. Eighteen people died in the explosion, many others were injured, and the church was badly damaged.
Many of those who died from St. Porphyry were housed and mourned at Holy Family Parish, the only Catholic church in Gaza City and the oldest Christian community in the world. While serving as shelter for hundreds of people, like so many holy sites, the Holy Family became the scene of abject terror when Israeli tanks surrounded it and a sniper shot dead a woman and her daughter, Nahida Khalil Anton and Samar Kamal Anton, as they left a building in the parish compound. Snipers then injured seven other people who tried to protect those who had taken refuge in the church grounds. While Israel claimed the church provoked an attack by hiding a rocket launcher within its walls, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem bluntly declared the killings were committed in cold blood.
The same day, an IDF tank fired artillery shells at the Missionaries of Charity convent located in the parish compound, where 54 disabled people lived under the care of the nuns and which had served as a place of worship and security since the war. The building was set on fire, making it uninhabitable. Shortly afterwards, this single Catholic church, a parish of some 140 Catholics, was severely damaged by shrapnel during a fiery bombardment.
Yet the parish committees have been active, despite the constant risk to their lives. These courageous Catholic activists organized and mobilized efforts to procure and provide food, shelter, medical aid, debris removal and child care and to keep the liturgy available to the faithful. These parishioners have been compared to the shepherds of Bethlehem, seeking the Lord with firm and simple faith.
Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Jordan remained eerily silent, like ghost towns, during the Christmas period on the orders of the West Bank authorities, quivering in solidarity under the terrible veil of death and hatred – the very curses of which Our Lord is came to redeem humanity, and in these same lands. The irony of these atrocities ravaging these sacred places of peace and salvation is truly grim, and it is a travesty to witness such brutality and suffering in the ancestral homeland of the early Christians and the Holy Land of our religion.
And Hamas, of course, is not the only bad actor in this crisis. For decades since the founding of the nation of Israel, the Palestinian people have been victims of displacement, war crimes and political machinations. If only the grace and consolation of the Catholic faith could regain its hold on the souls of these poor afflicted so that they might regain the unique and often paradoxical confidence and courage that trust in Christ bestows. Faith is stronger than war. And although the majority of Palestinians cling to their own Islamic faith – either with extreme hope or, in the case of Hamas, with extremist action – there is a truth that awaits them as it greeted its ancestors in the early days of the Church.
Given Israel’s arguably disproportionate retaliation to Hamas’ undoubtedly despicable attacks, Gaza’s Christians must remain strong in the face of devastating horrors. And they are not powerless. In fact, Israel may well fear the effect it could have on its war against Hamas and its desire to eventually annex Palestine. For Christians have voices that extend beyond the Middle East and into the Western world to denounce occupation, oppression and genocide. And as Christians and Catholics, we know that our prayers go beyond this world, to areas that can bring about the miracle of peace.
Some of this information may seem like old conspiratorial information long lost in the fast-paced media flow. But could it be that the intentions to conceal or minimize these outrages against Christian sites and peoples have been somewhat realized here in the West? Has enough been said of support and concern for our Catholic and Christian brothers in Gaza, whose very existence as a religious community is under threat in a seemingly sinister and certainly tragic way?
Certainly, Israel is an ally of the United States and should be allowed to defend its borders, however contested they may be – but, as American Catholics, we should not hesitate to ask the extent to which we should support Israel in concert . . This is especially true given these direct attacks on our brothers and sisters in Christ and the brutal aggression that Israel is escalating, which fits into the Palestinian narrative that although the Hamas attack was indefensible, the Zionists have been waiting for it for a long time.
And this is not an anti-Semitic sentiment, it is simply a sentiment in favor of peace. Being Catholic should not mean siding with Israel or Palestine, but rather siding with the peaceful coexistence of Christians, Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land; a peace where the truth of the Gospel can flourish and win new souls to the one true faith.
Let us pray this Lent for the safety, comfort and strength of our Middle Eastern brothers in faith, offering our sacrifices to alleviate the suffering of all Palestinian Christians in peril. And above all, let us pray that the bloody and bitter war between Israel and Hamas will end, one way or another, forever. The Lord has mercy.
(Photo: St. Porphyry Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City, damaged during Israeli bombing on January 5, 2024. (AFP via Getty Images))
