One part of President Joe Biden’s ultra-publicized trip to the Middle East took place in private, away from the eyes of any of the journalists who accompanied him on the five-day visit.
The president was accompanied only by a single Secret Service agent when, after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem on July 15, he went on a personal pilgrimage to the complex containing the Basilica of the Nativity and the Church of Saint Catherine to pray.
Ibrahim Faltas, a Franciscan priest with the Custody of the Holy Land, first met Him, at the Jerusalem ceremony in which Israeli President Isaac Herzog awarded the U.S. president Israel’s highest civilian distinction, the Presidential Medal of Honour. Saint Catherine’s, adjacent to the basilica, is where the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem traditionally holds the crowded midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Last Friday, anticipating Mr. Biden’s visit, it was empty.
“After going to the grotto he came to Saint Catherine’s Church, where I received him,” Father Faltas said, in an exclusive interview with America. “He arrived with the Custos and only one Secret Service agent.”
“He took a rosary out of his pocket, saying, ‘I always pray with a rosary,’ and remembered his son Beau. He cried. He was very emotional,” Father Faltas said, about the moment in which Mr. Biden kneeled alone in a wooden pew, the rosary in his hands, and prayed.
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