Archbishop Mor Anthimos Jack Yakoub, Vicar Patriarchal of the Syriac church in Jerusalem, together with a number of other Palestinian Christian leaders, assured me that they need our love and prayers—but they also badly need practical support if Christianity is not to die in our lifetime in the land that gave birth to our common religion.
The Syriac Orthodox Church, which now has just north of 2,000 members between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, personifies how imperilled the entire Church is in the Holy Land. Unless pilgrims and tourists return in great numbers soon, they cannot hold on, and their schools and churches will have to close as they no longer have the cash base to support them.
The same holds true in Bethlehem (the City of Bread), where not only the French and Polish orphanages but the wider Christian community are literally depending on the Salesian Bakery for their daily bread. Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, jointly administered and run by a coalition of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Roman Catholic Church, stands empty. The Franciscan hostel beside it is shuttered, as are the nearby rows of souvenir shops, while Manger Square is so empty it might as well be in a ghost town.
The all-Christian town of Taybeh, a little over an hour’s drive past Ramallah to the north, is likewise on its last legs. The Khoury family have shuttered their hotel, their beer factory is running at a loss, and, like for the rest of the village, settler roadblocks and vandalism stop them from accessing their crops. Faced with all this, Christians continue to flee via Jordan to claim refugee status in Portugal. And I, for one, do not blame them.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member