Gaza Christians pray for peace at Holy Family Church on Palm Sunday

The faithful walked slowly in procession past the stone facade of Holy Family Church, Gaza’s only Catholic church, on Palm Sunday, gathering to pray for peace while war raged around them (Psalm 122:6).

Inside the courtyard, dozens of children and older people moved about in a calm that belied the humanitarian crisis beyond the church gates in Gaza City. Worshippers in their dress clothes lined the wooden pews, which were decorated with palm fronds for the service marking the start of Easter week.

“Our celebration of Palm Sunday is an opportunity for hope, goodness and peace for us and for the entire world,” said a young man speaking from the pulpit. He wore an ankle-length red robe. “In order to renew our hearts and make them full of love, giving and peace,” he said. Altar boys in the front row listened quietly, while parishioners with drawn faces, worn by months of war, filled the other rows.

The church in northern Gaza is a short drive from Al-Shifa hospital and its neighborhood, where heavy combat has raged between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters. A recent UN-backed assessment said Gaza’s northern area would fall into famine by May unless there was urgent action. Heavy fighting has made it particularly difficult to deliver emergency food aid to the some 300,000 people the UN estimates are still in the area.

“This year, we don’t have the heart to celebrate,” said Nabila Saleh, a sister at Holy Family church, speaking to AFP. “It’s true that we decorated, but we don’t feel the joy of other years.”

The Gaza war was sparked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said the total death toll during almost six months of war had reached 32,226, most of them women and children.

Although the church’s facade, courtyard and worship area are mostly intact, the site has been deeply affected by the fighting. Christian families from Gaza have found refuge inside. In December, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported that two Christian women were killed by Israeli fire at the church. The Israeli army said it had “no reports of a hit on the church,” and stressed that it “does not target civilians, no matter their religion.”

Far from Gaza, Palestinian Christians marked Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, with the fate of people trapped by the war weighing heavily on them. Thousands walked from Bethphage Church into the Old City, recreating Jesus’s arrival, when crowds laid palm fronds at his feet.

Source: Read the original report