Pope Francis has encouraged parishioners to support the Pontifical Good Friday Collection, which aids Christians in the Holy Land. The collection will be taken up in parishes on Good Friday, April 18.
Donations to this collection play a vital role in helping the Church continue its mission to provide religious education, maintain Catholic schools and support parishes in the land made holy by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
The collection also helps preserve sacred Christian shrines in places such as Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem. With the ongoing conflict in Israel, Christians in the Holy Land are facing even greater hardship, particularly as many depended on pilgrimages to these sites as a primary source of income.
Father David Grenier, O.F.M., commissariat of the Holy Land in Washington, D.C., said this year help for Holy Land Christians is needed more than ever.
“Still repaying debts from the pandemic shutdown, they found themselves soon assaulted by war,” Father Grenier wrote in a letter to Raleigh Bishop Luis Zarama. “Now, already in debt, many have again lost jobs. Fear and despair have driven many Christians to leave the Holy Land. Over the past century, Christians have gone from 23% to less than 2% of the population. And more than 90 Christian families have already left Bethlehem since October 7, having lost hope for a good future for them in the land where Jesus and the Church were born.”
In this Jubilee Year of Hope, Father Grenier notes that “hope is a necessary virtue in a land marked by cycles of violence and relative calm.”
“Let us foster hope in our brothers and sisters who strive to remain in the land where the Son of God dwelled among us,” Father Grenier wrote. “How could we allow the land where Jesus Christ walked and called people to follow him become a place without a local Church?”
For more information, visit www.myfranciscan.org.