Christmas this season in the Holy Land will be celebratory, despite ongoing blood-shed and war, the patriarchs of the Holy Land said, as Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa encouraged pilgrims to come back to the birthplace of Jesus.
“Pilgrimage is now absolutely safe and also important for society,” Pizzaballa said in Cologne Dec. 3, reported KNA, a Catholic news agency in Germany. The cardinal hoped that the relative calming of the war situation in Israel will lead to more pilgrims arriving again over the Christmas season.
Pilgrimages and religious tourism are an important economic factor for many Christians in the region, with many not able to make any income for their families as tourists disappeared and stores across pilgri-mage sites remain closed for the 14th month since Oct. 7, 2023. That is when Hamas attacked Israel killing 1,200 people, which ignited the Israel-Hamas war focusing on the Gaza Strip, destroying vast parts of the enclave and killing over 45,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
As Advent approached, the patriarchs and heads of the churches in Jerusalem issued a statement, however, that war this year won’t stop the joyful celebration of Christmas in the land of Jesus.
This year, the patriarchs said, they “encourage our congregations and people to fully commemorate the approach and arrival of Christ’s birth by giving public signs of Christian hope.” At the same time, the patriarchs asked all of the faithful to keep the suffering people of the Holy Land in their prayers, “reaching out to them with deeds of kindness and charity, and welcoming them as Christ himself has welcomed each of us.” This way, they said, “we will echo the Christmas story itself, where the angels announced to the shepherds glad tidings of Christ’s birth in the midst of similarly dark times in our region … offering to them and to the entire world a message of divine hope and peace.”