The Vatican Explores Israel, and Discovers Its Own Faithful
The number of Jewish Christians in Israel is growing constantly, and the Holy See is adapting. The new Custodian of the Holy Land speaks Hebrew. And in the Cenacle, soon to be returned to the Church, the mass will again be celebrated
by Sandro Magister
ROMA - Since May 15, the Holy Land has had a new Custodian, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, 38, from Bergamo. The Custodian has authority over all the major Christian holy sites in the land of Jesus. His fellow friars were the ones who elected him, but it was the Vatican that had the last word. Pizzaballa speaks Hebrew and has been parish priest for the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem. He is a very close friend of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Gourion, the Jewish convert who, since last autumn, has been placed there by the pope to care for "the Catholic faithful of Jewish expression" living in the Holy Land.
The new Custodian is the confirmation of a shift that is taking place. The Vatican is trying to cool the pro-Palestinian ardor of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem, directed by Michel Sabbah, an Arab, and is looking with growing interest to the other side, to Israel.
The shift has religious motives: John Paul II¿s strong desire to make peace with the Jews, which he repeated in a message on May 23 for the hundredth anniversary of the synagogue of Rome.
But it also has demographic motives: the number of Arab Christians in the Holy Land is continually dwindling, and there are only a few tens of thousands of them in the Territories; while the non-Arab Christians who live in Israel are ever more numerous. During the 1990¿s, more than 200,000 of them came from Russia, Ukraine, and other Slavic countries. Their origins are Jewish, but they are baptized. Many of them were born into Orthodoxy, but easily become Catholic. The Church of Rome sees in them the future of the Christian presence in the Holy Land.
The Vatican works in many places, and through many agents. For the winning over of the immigrants from Eastern Europe, it gave free rein to the members of the Neocatechumenal Way, who are extremely active in proselytizing and are certainly the most pro-Israeli of the Catholic movements born in recent decades. They have nearly completed a citadel for the formation of their missionaries, above Mount Chorazin, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The project was inaugurated by the pope in 2000, during his visit to Israel, amid the applause of the rabbis pleased by the construction¿s Old Testament style. The group¿s founder and supreme head, Spaniard Kiko Argüello, recently met Ariel Sharon. Even during the darkest months of the intifada, they never stopped bringing pilgrims to the Holy Land, working through a Jewish travel agency or directly through the Israeli airline, El Al.
As for the Arab Christians who live in the Territories, the Vatican does all it can to keep them from emigrating: it solicits the pilgrims who visit those lands to bring monetary aid. But humanitarian support is one thing; political support is another. The Vatican has become more severe toward pro-Palestinian activism. Franciscan Fr. Ibrahim Faltas, who became famous as the spokesmen of the guerillas who occupied the basilica of Bethlehem in the spring of 2002, is on the list of those to be purged.
And then there¿s the political territory. Last autumn, when Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran left his post as foreign minister, relations between the Vatican and Israel were terrible. With his successor, Giovanni Lajolo, and with the new Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Oded Ben-Hur, there are some glimmers of hope. The restoration of official negotiations is imminent. And one of the points close to being resolved has as its object the Room of the Cenacle, in Jerusalem.
In 2000, John Paul II celebrated mass there. But formally, the Cenacle is a former mosque belonging to the state of Israel, and open to visits as if it were a museum. The Holy See hopes to see it restored as a place of Christian worship, and the pope was expecting to give the news last Holy Thursday, the memorial of the last supper of Jesus. The Israeli government is ready to cede the use of the Cenacle, though not the ownership, to the head of the Catholic Church. But there are still points to be negotiated: for example, beneath the room is a tomb venerated by the Jews as the burial place of David. The Vatican¿s official negotiators are Lajolo and the nuncio in Israel, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. But moving in their shadow are the ¿sherpas¿, the effective architects of this accord, as of others. These are both Franciscans: David-Maria Jaeger, another Jewish convert, a tremendously resolute jurist, and Pizzaballa, the new Custodian.
[From "L¿espresso" no. 22, May 28-June 3, 2004]
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Another point of friction with the Vatican concerns the lack of renewal of the visas for entry into Israel of about 120 priests and religious originating from Lebanon and other Arab countries.
For years, they have had their visas renewed as a matter of routine. But a few months ago, citing security reasons, the Israeli government decided to subject every request for renewal to meticulous scrutiny, and it has blocked all of them. The result is that many of these religious remain in Israel illegally, with an expired visa, and do not leave because they are afraid they will not be able to reenter.
To hasten to the resolution of the affair, Walter Cardinal Kasper visited Israel from May 24-28. Properly speaking, his role is to foster religious relations with Judaism. But Kasper put the question of visas on the agenda of his visit, which was packed with meetings with rabbis and Catholic, Greek, and Armenian churchmen, in addition to meetings with Israeli authorities.
Following Kaper¿s visit, there will be in Jerusalem from June 1-4 a meeting of the rectors of Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, and their counterparts from the four major pontifical Roman universities: Bishop Salvatore Fisichella of the Lateran University, Jesuit Fr. Franco Imoda of the Gregorian University, Fr. Giuseppe Cavallotto of the Urbaniana, the university of the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, and Fr. Mariano Fazio of Holy Cross University, which belongs to Opus Dei.
Fisichella is the right-hand man of Camillo Cardinal Ruini, the pope¿s vicar, who, on Sunday, May 23, read the message of John Paul II to the Jews in the synagogue of Rome, on the hundredth anniversary of its construction. Imoda is a confrere and friend of Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini.
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But the controversy created by the wall of separation Israel is raising between itself and the Territories is without a foreseeable quick solution.
The Church¿s protest is based upon both principle (the pope publicly called for "bridges, not walls"), and practical motives. One of the last acts by Pizzaballa¿s predecessor as Custodian of the Holy Land, Fr. Giovanni Battistelli, was the March 24 presentation in Geneva of a formal protest to the UN commission for human rights.
In it, apart from complaining that the wall does not keep to the "Green Line" of 1967 but swallows up 7 percent of the Palestinian territory, containing about 95,000 inhabitants, the Custodian denounces a series of "human rights violations" against Christians in the area.
"Heavy cement platforms block the road towards the Arab town of Abu Dis, and cut in two parts the old town of Bethania. The army bulldozers have penetrared the fence of a Catholic convent and destroyed the olive trees of another one. The wall will also surround another religious house in the same area, impeding its accessfrom on side of the Territories. All of these acts flagrantly violate the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel which was signed on 30 December 1993, and which entered into force on 10 March 1994." Precise references to two articles on the Agreement follow.
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Useful LinksOn the website of the Custody of the Holy Land, the profile of the new office holder, Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa:
> The New Custos of the Holy LandHis role:
> The role of the Custos for the Holy LandHis first programmatic interview:
> Interview with the new Custos for the Holy LandAnd another his interview with "AsiaNews":
> Building bridges for Jews and Muslims__________
The dialogue between the Church and the Jews, in the most recent message dedicated to the theme by John Paul II:
> Messaggio del Santo Padre per il centenario della sinagoga di Roma. 23 maggio 2004.__________
The website of the center of formation of the Neocatechumenal Way on Mount Chorazin:
> Domus Galilaeae International CenterAnd a more detailed description of their presence in Israel, signed by a member of them, Giuseppe Gennarini, published in "il Foglio on January 27, 2004:
> In Galilea, i neocatecumenali aprono la loro casa agli ebrei__________
On this website, on the relaunching of Catholic pilgrimages to the Holy Land:
> Pope Doesn¿t Return to Synagogue, but Sends His Faithful to Jerusalem (23.4.2004)
On the Vatican¿s Middle East politics, analyzed by professor Silvio Ferrari:
> Vatican Middle East Politics: Beyond the Clash of Civilizations (23.4.2004)
Another analysis, by professor Vittorio E. Parsi:
> Vatican Geopolitics. Rome¿s Opposition to Israel, Point by Point (6.11.2003)
On the controversial nomination of the bishop for the Jewish Christians of Israel, Jean-Baptiste Gourion:
> Arab Patriarch Sabbah has an Auxiliary - But He Speaks Hebrew (3.9.2003)
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English translation by Matthew Sherry:
> traduttore@hotmail.comGo to the home page of
> www.chiesa.espressonline.it/english, to access the latest articles and links to other resources.
Sandro Magister¿s e-mail address is
s.magister@espressoedit.it
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31.5.2004
