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26-12-2024
ROME: Christmas revelers around the world donned red and white Santa hats, offered meals to the homeless and lit candles today, as Pope Francis launched observation of the global holiday with a sombre mass in the Vatican.
At Saint Peter’s Basilica, Francis used his Christmas Eve mass to urge Christians to think “of the wars, of the machine-gunned children, of the bombs on schools or hospitals” as this year’s Christmas once again takes place under the shadow of Israel’s war on Hamas and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
His remarks come just days after he denounced the “cruelty” of Israeli strikes, which prompted objections from Israeli diplomats.
Francis is due to deliver his traditional Christmas Day blessing, Urbi et Orbi (to the city and the world), at midday today, while in the biblical birthplace of Jesus, the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, observations of the holiday have been muted.
For the second year in a row, Bethlehem has done away with its giant Christmas tree and the elaborate decorations that normally draw throngs of tourists, settling for just a few festive lights.
“This year we limited our joy,” Bethlehem mayor Anton Salman told media.
Prayers, including at the Church of the Nativity’s famed midnight mass, will still be held in the presence of the Catholic Church’s Latin patriarch, but the festivities will be of a more strictly religious nature.
The patriarch, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, told a small crowd on Tuesday that he had just returned from Gaza, where he “saw everything destroyed, poverty, disaster” but “I also saw life they don’t give up. So you should not give up either. Never.”
At Manger Square, in the heart of the Palestinian city, a group of scouts held a parade that broke the silence.
“Our children want to play and laugh,” read a sign carried by one of them, as his friends whistled and cheered.
Other banners said: “We want life, not death”, and “Stop the Gaza genocide now!”
Jerusalem resident Hisham Makhoul said spending Christmas in the holy city offered an “escape” from the Israel-Hamas war, which has raged for more than 14 months in the Gaza Strip.
“What we’re going through is very difficult and we can’t completely forget about it,” said Makhoul of the plight of Palestinians in the besieged territory.
Gaza and Syria
About 1,100 Christians live in Gaza, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory.
Hundreds of Gazan Christians gathered at a church to pray for an end to the war.
“This Christmas carries the stench of death and destruction,” said George al-Sayegh, who for weeks has sought refuge in the 12th-century Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City. “There is no joy, no festive spirit. We don’t even know who will survive until the next holiday.”
In a message to Christians all over the world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked them for supporting Israel’s fight against the “forces of evil”.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, hundreds of people took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus to protest the burning of a Christmas tree in a Syrian town, just over two weeks after Islamist-led rebels’ ousted president Bashar al-Assad.
“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” said a demonstrator who gave his name as Georges. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
