December 25, 2023 / 11:07 AM
In his Christmas Eve homily in Bethlehem this Christmas 2023, Sunday, December 24, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, expressed his wish that the Holy Land be a place of joy, forgiveness, peace and reconciliation to end war.
“As with Mary and Joseph, for us, here today, there seems to be no place for Christmas. For too many days, we have all felt assailed by the painful and sad feeling that there is no place, this year, for that joy and peace that, on this holy night, a few meters from here, the angels announced to the shepherds of Bethlehem “said the Cardinal in his homily at the Mass he presided at Saint Catherine Church.
“At this moment we cannot stop thinking about all those who in this war have been left with nothing, displaced, alone, affected by their loved ones, paralyzed by their pain. Tonight I remember the kidnapped hostages and their families. I am thinking, in particular, of Gaza and its two million inhabitants. Truly, that ‘there was no place for them’ well expresses their situation, known to everyone today and whose suffering does not cease to cry out to the entire world.”