Good Friday Collection: Custody of Holy Land asks for generosity and support

Holy Week 2025 is about to begin and Catholics around the world prepare to commemorate Jesus’ death, death and resurrection. Every year, every Good Friday, the faithful also have the opportunity to help sustain the holy places where these events took place 2000 years ago.

These places, which have great religious and historical importance for millions of people, are under the administration of the Holy Land custodya province of the religious order founded by San Francisco de Asís, which is dedicated to protect them and vivify them to “make them speak to the heart and the minds of all those who carry out the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.”

Through A video broadcast at the beginning of Marchthe main head of custody, Fray Francesco Patton, called Catholics to be generous this year “to preserve Holy Land and support their people.”

“We feel the need to extend the hand again in a gesture of who gets beggar for love to his brothers: apóenos with his prayer; apóen us again visiting the holy places as pilgrims, according to their possibilities; also após us economically, remembering that everything you donate, The Lord will return them multiplied a hundred times ”Fray Patton urged.

The custodian of Tierra Santa explained that this last year “has been especially difficult” for the region due to the violence of war that has brought “death and destruction”, in addition to sowing “more hatred between neighboring peoples and brothers.” Many families, he continued, have run out of the income necessary to cover their basic needs and many young people have been forced to postpone “the dream of forming a family and having children.”

“On Good Friday, when in its diocese and parishes the collection is made in favor of the holy places, Remind us and be generous. Motivate their parish priests not to forget us, who, by mandate of the universal church, take care of the Holy Land sanctuaries and the Christians who live around them. Motivate the members of their communities to be generous and remember what Jesus himself told us: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving (Acts 20,35),” he said.

In addition, he recalled that it is thanks to the contribution of the faithful around the world that Franciscan custody can carry out the mission that the universal church has entrusted to him.

“Please, donate with generosity and joy. Donate according to the amplitude of their heart. We will simply be the channel through which your benevolence, your charity and altruism will pass. Help us to help!” Fray Patton concluded.

What is the story of the Collection of Good Friday?

The Custody of the Santa Tierra indicates that the first document mentioned by the collection made for the benefit of the Holy Land dates from 1455: the Bula de Calixto III, which authorized the Franciscans to travel to various parts of the world to raise funds for the benefit of holy places.

Fray Narciso Klimas, historian and archivist of the Custody of the Holy Land, says that the Franciscans are “successors of the crusaders”, whose mission was also to maintain the places of worship in the Holy Land, although he remarks that the friars “managed to do it peacefully.”

“Only in the nineteenth century we found that the collection should be made on Good Friday, where it is also specified that the offerings made by the collections in the different churches had to be delivered to the commissioners of the Holy Land, which they should then take them to the Holy Land,” said Fray Klimas.

“We must know that from the collection of Good Friday, 65% is destined for custody and 35% to other works of Holy Land and other institutes. Therefore, most of the collection of Good Friday, which reaches custody, is really intended for social works. It is only a small part for sanctuaries,” he added.

For the Franciscan, that the collection is made on Good Friday has a special historical and theological meaning, because it makes it easier than the Catholics in the world connect with Holy Land through the Passion of Christ.

“Let’s help Holy Land, because you need the help of the entire world,” said the historian and archivist of custody, in an explanatory video published in 2024.