Every night, without exception, a mobile phone rings in the Holy Family Church in Gaza and a priest answers. The voice at the end of the line is that of Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church and spiritual leader of a global congregation of 1.4 billion people.
For more than a year, the pontiff has made nightly calls to the church to comfort the hundreds of Palestinian Christians taking refuge there as fighting rages in the streets and Israeli warplanes reduce much of the city to rubble. around him.
For those living in harsh conditions in the church complex and now preparing for their second Christmas in the midst of war, regular contact with the pontiff assures them that they have not been forgotten.
“It calms our fears and makes us feel cared for,” said Attallah Tarazi, a retired surgeon. “The Pope gives us his blessings and prays with us if the connection is good.”
Pope Francis during one of his daily video calls with the church in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Ghj8gRGfOw
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The entire Christian community in Gaza (up to 1,000 people) sought refuge in October 2023 in the Holy Family Catholic Church complex and the nearby St. Porphyry Greek Orthodox Church, the only two Christian houses of worship in the territory.
The pontiff said of the Gaza conflict in his annual Christmas greetings on Saturday: “They bombed children yesterday. This is cruelty; “This is not war.” He told CBS sixty minutes program in May: “I speak every night at seven in the Gaza parish. . . They tell me what happens there. It’s very hard, very hard. . . Sometimes they are hungry and tell me things. “There is a lot of suffering.”
On December 22, the head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, led a Christmas Mass at the Holy Family Church in a rare foreign visit allowed by Israeli authorities to the besieged strip.
Despite the war outside, cassock-clad priests regularly celebrate masses in Gaza’s two churches under domes painted with biblical scenes. Some lessons have also begun in church compounds for children missing the second year of school after the war sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which the Palestinian militant group killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fierce offensive that Israel subsequently launched in the Gaza Strip.
The number of Christians taking refuge in churches has decreased this year because many managed to leave through the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which was open until it was taken by Israel on May 6.
That left about 650 people in the two churches, said George Akroush, an official with the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Families sleep on mattresses and survive on canned food and lentils, without fresh meat, fruits or vegetables. Aid agencies are sending supplies, while the patriarchy has organized some humanitarian convoys.
“We are trying to send warm items because it is very cold in Gaza,” Akroush said. “We want to give them boots, children’s clothing and thermal clothing. There is also a serious shortage of mattresses, but the Israelis refuse to let them in, even though most people sleep on the floor.”
An Israeli official said Tuesday that a truckload of aid arrived ahead of the cardinal’s visit. “This shipment included mattresses, warm clothing and additional winter items, as well as other types of aid chosen by the mission,” they said.
Akroush said the patriarchate had attempted to send supplies for between 6,000 and 7,000 people in each of its convoys so that aid would also reach Muslim neighbors. “We don’t make any distinction between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “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 still held out hope that his property in the strip could be passed on to his descendants. But he never expected to spend another Christmas in church.
“I didn’t think we would be here so long, sleeping every night to the sound of shelling,” he said. “Many shells have fallen near the church.”
Built in the 1960s to accommodate Christians among Palestinian refugees forced to flee to Gaza when Israel was founded in 1948, the Catholic church was named after the passage of the Holy Family through the territory during their biblical flight to Egypt .
Its complex includes a convent, a school and several other buildings, one of which housed 73 people with disabilities. The December 2023 rocket attacks destroyed that building, and its residents moved to another on the compound, where nuns still tend to them.
Large areas of Gaza City have been reduced to rubble-strewn wasteland by Israeli bombardments, and most residents have fled south on Israeli orders.
The status of the churches as places of worship and the Pope’s interest in the welfare of trapped Christians appear to have conferred some protection. But still, sniper fire, shells and missiles have hit both complexes, and there were deaths in the first months of the war.
In December 2023, an elderly woman and her daughter were shot dead by snipers while walking inside the Sagrada Familia complex. The Latin Patriarchate accused Israeli troops of carrying out the murders, but the Israeli army denied involvement.
Two months earlier, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building housing families in the Saint Porphyrius complex, killing 17 people. Israel promised to investigate, but no results have been announced.
Attallah al-Amash, an accountant, lost his seven-month-old daughter, Joelle, and his wife’s parents in that attack. He then moved his wife and three-year-old son, Ibrahim, to the Catholic church.
“I feel like everything is negative and there is a feeling of heaviness from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep,” Amash said. “We are waiting for (the war) to end, but it is not.”
His little boy plays with other children in the cemetery, but Amash said he and his wife “have nothing to think about and nothing to do, we just sit there.”
The building in Gaza City where the family lived was destroyed in July. Since then they have rarely left the premises. Amash hopes for a future outside the enclave. “If I find a job abroad, I will leave,” he said. “But now we just have to wait for the war to end.”
Samer Tarazi, a refugee in San Porfirio, was preparing to leave for Australia when the Rafah crossing was closed. His wife and three children had already traveled, so the family is now separated.
A member of the large Christian Tarazi clan in Gaza and cousin of Attallah Tarazi, he leaves Saint Porphyrius to film for his media services company when he deems it safe.
“There is total destruction outside,” he said. “There is not a single building that has not been damaged or has windows. I would say 80 percent of the buildings are now uninhabitable.”
He also wants to leave Gaza after the war because “Christians are becoming an even smaller minority.”
But Arkoush, of the Latin Patriarchate, said it was too early to rule out the future of the Christian community in Gaza. He expects another 150 people to leave after the war, but said many chose to stay when they were offered the opportunity to go when the crossing was open.
“They said, ‘This is the land of our ancestors and we are not a foreign community.’ I hope that the numbers decrease, but that the Christian presence ends, I don’t think so.”
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv. Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
