Christians huddled in Gaza speak to the Pope every night

Every night, without fail, a mobile phone rings in the Holy Family Church in Gaza, and the parish priest answers it. The voice at the end of the line is that of Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church and spiritual leader of a global flock of 1.4 billion people.

For more than a year, the pope has been making nightly visits to the church to comfort hundreds of Palestinian Christians taking shelter there as fighting rages in the streets outside, and Israeli warplanes bomb much of the city around them to rubble.

For those living in harsh conditions in the church compound and now preparing for a second Christmas amid the war, regular contact with the Pope reassures them that they have not been forgotten.

“It calms our fears and makes us feel cared for,” said Atallah Tarazi, a retired surgeon. “The Pope gives us his blessings and prays with us if the connection is good.”

Gaza’s entire Christian community – up to 1,000 people – took refuge in October 2023 at the Holy Family Catholic Church complex and at the nearby St. Porphyrios Greek Orthodox Church, the only two Christian houses of worship in the area.

“Yesterday the children were bombed,” the Pope said of the Gaza conflict in his annual Christmas greetings on Saturday. This is cruelty. “This is not a war.” He told CBS Sixty minutes Program in May: “Every night at seven o’clock I speak to the parishioners of Gaza. . . . They tell me what is happening there. It is very difficult, very difficult. . . Sometimes they feel hungry and they tell me things. There is a lot of suffering.”

On December 22, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, presided over Christmas Mass at Sagrada Familia in a rare foreign visit permitted by Israeli authorities to the besieged Strip.

Despite the war outside, priests wearing clerical robes regularly hold Mass in Gaza’s two churches under domes painted with biblical scenes. Some lessons also began in church compounds for missing children in the second year of school after the war sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which the Palestinian movement killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage.

More than 45,000 Palestinians were killed due to the fierce attack launched by Israel after that on the Gaza Strip.

The number of Christians taking shelter in churches decreased this year because many were able to exit through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which was open until Israel seized it on May 6.

George Akroush, an official at the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, said that this left about 650 people in the two churches. Families sleep on mattresses and live on canned food and lentils, without meat, fresh fruits or vegetables. Relief agencies are sending supplies, while the Patriarchate has organized some humanitarian convoys.

Akroush said: “We are trying to send warm materials because it is very cold in Gaza.” “We want to give them shoes, children’s clothes and thermal clothing. There is also a severe shortage of mattresses, but the Israelis refuse to let them in, even though most people sleep on the floor.”

An Israeli official said on Tuesday that a truck loaded with aid had entered ahead of the cardinal’s visit. They added, “This shipment included mattresses, warm clothes, and additional winter supplies, in addition to other types of aid chosen by the mission.”

Akroush said that the Patriarchate tried to send supplies to between 6,000 and 7,000 people in each of its convoys so that the aid would also reach Muslim neighbors. He added: “We do not differentiate between Christians and Muslims.” “This is the mission of the church.”

Tarazi refused to leave Gaza to join his adult children in Australia: he wanted to see the outcome of the war, and was still hoping that his holdings in the Strip would pass to his descendants. But he never expected to spend another Christmas in church.

“I didn’t think we would stay here for so long, sleeping to the sound of bombing every night,” he said. “Many shells fell near the church.”

Built in the 1960s to accommodate Christians from among the Palestinian refugees forced to flee to Gaza when Israel was founded in 1948, the Catholic Church was named after the Holy Family’s passage through the area during their biblical journey to Egypt.

Its complex included a monastery, a school and several other buildings, one of which housed 73 people with disabilities. Rocket attacks in December 2023 destroyed that building, and its residents moved to another building in the complex, where nuns still care for them.

Large areas of Gaza City have been turned into wastelands filled with rubble due to Israeli bombing, and most residents have fled south on Israeli orders.

The churches’ status as houses of worship and the pope’s concern for the welfare of the besieged Christians appear to have afforded them some protection. But sniper fire, shells and rockets still hit the two compounds, and people were killed in the first months of the war.

In December 2023, an elderly woman and her daughter were killed by a sniper while walking inside the Holy Family compound. The Latin Patriarchate accused Israeli forces of carrying out the killings, but the Israeli army denied its involvement.

Two months earlier, an Israeli air strike destroyed a building housing families in the San Porphyrios complex, killing 17 people. Israel promised to investigate, but no result was announced.

Atallah Al-Ammash, an accountant, lost his seven-month-old daughter Joelle and his wife’s parents in that attack. Then he transferred his wife and three-year-old son Abraham to the Catholic Church.

“I feel like everything is negative, and there is a heavy feeling from the moment we wake up until the time we go to sleep,” Amash says. “We are waiting [the war] To finish, but it doesn’t happen.”

His young son plays with other children in the churchyard, but Amash said he and his wife “have nothing to think about or do, we just sit there.”

The building where the family lived in Gaza City was destroyed in July. Since then they have rarely left the compound. Amash hopes for a future outside the Strip. “If I find a job abroad, I will go,” he said. “But now we just have to wait for the war to end.”

Samer Tarazi, who took refuge in St. Porphyrius camp, was preparing to leave for Australia when the Rafah crossing was closed. His wife and three children had already left, so the family was now separated.

A member of the large Christian Tarazi clan in Gaza, and a cousin of Atallah al-Tarazi, he leaves Saint Porphyrius to film for his media services company when he deems it safe.

He added: “Outside there is complete destruction.” “There is not a single building that is not damaged, or a building with windows. I would say that 80% of the buildings are now unlivable.”

He also wants to leave Gaza after the war because “Christians have become a smaller minority.”

But Arkoush, of the Latin Patriarchate, said it was too early to write off the future of the Christian community in Gaza. He expects another 150 people to leave after the war, but he said many chose to stay when given the opportunity to go when the crossing was open.

“They said: This is the land of our ancestors and we are not a foreign group.” “I expect the numbers to decrease, but for the Christian presence to end – I don’t think so.”

Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv. Cartography by Aditi Bhandari