'I will make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to ask the Lord, while visiting the places sanctified by His earthly life, for the precious gift of unity and peace for the Middle East and for all humanity," Pope Benedict XVI said when he announced his visit to Israel and the region (his visit includes Jordan and the Palestinian territories).
However, as well as his pilgrimage for "unity and peace," the pope will also have to deal with business closer to home - the state of the Christian community in the Holy Land and, in particular, its dwindling presence in Jerusalem.
In 1946, two years before the State of Israel was established, the Christian community of Jerusalem numbered some 31,000, or 20 percent of the population. Today, Christians account for 2% of the capital's population, or some 14,000 people, including monks and clergymen from abroad.
"On top of its demographic impoverishment, the Christian community in Jerusalem suffers from an internal split," explains Dr. Amnon Ramon of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, the author of extensive studies on the Christian communities in Israel. "The Catholic community is the largest, with some 4,500 people, followed by the Greek Orthodox with 3,500 and the Armenian community, numbering some 1,500. The various Protestant communities number around 850; the Coptic-Syrians, some 250; and the Ethiopian community in the capital numbers some 60," he says.
"With this visit, the pope wants to awaken the Catholic world to the difficult situation of the Christian Arab communities," continues Ramon. "The most frightening scenario for the pontiff and the Christians here would be to witness the holy sites becoming museums due to the lack of the faithful using them - as has happened, for example, in Turkey."
That is a sentiment echoed by Sami Barsoum, the mukhtar of Jerusalem's Syrian Orthodox community. "Our future is so gloomy that it is not inconceivable that in the near future tourists will come here and look for Christians to tell them about our history here, and they will not find even one to do so! The tourists will find only stones but no Christians living here."
Barsoum says: "I can tell you that for [all] us Christians today, there is no real difference, since we share the same problems and difficulties."
A tailor born in Jerusalem, Barsoum says he can still remember the glorious days when the Christians in the holy city numbered more than 60,000. "Today it's a pity - look what has happened. We are hardly 2% of the population. What kind of future can we expect here? All these years there were so many wars, so we have no security, no tranquility, and the result is emigration: our sons and daughters have run away. We are stuck between the two sides. Jews say we're Arabs, and Arab Muslims say we are Israelis. Our life has become so sensitive, so precarious, no wonder the Christians are leaving the country."
Barsoum adds that the general feeling is that the Vatican and all the other Christian community leaders do care "but very little is being done. We are a minority and being a minority, especially in a non-peaceful environment, is always bad. We have been here for centuries, but today most of us feel like foreigners in our own city."
Regarding the attitude of the municipality, Barsoum says that "[Mayor] Teddy's [Kollek] days were the best. There are good relations with Mayor Barkat, but it is not enough to solve our problems."
The depth of despair felt by Jerusalem's Christians can be gauged by recent comments made by two of the community's leaders, Father David Neuhaus and Archbishop Fouad Twal.
"The pope's visit raises hopes and dreams," said local Jesuit priest Father David Neuhaus in a recent interview on the Franciscan Web site, Custodia Terra Sancta. "We expect to hear from him a word of consolation and of hope regarding the difficult situation in which we live. Why we should stay here, in the Holy Land, rather than emigrate to countries where life might be easier."
"Come and see us and visit us, pray with us and for us, give us the assurance that we are not alone, that we are not abandoned," was the call to French Christians from Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, after the papal visit was announced.
"We expect to hear words that will encourage our youth to stay here; we expect to hear from the pope words regarding the importance, from a Christian point of view, of our existence here. The prospects for the future of our young generation are very dismal due to the lack of security in such a situation of conflict," says Neuhaus, who received a doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and teaches at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary in Beit Jala, at Bethlehem University and at various Catholic institutions in Jerusalem. "In a way," he told In Jerusalem, "the situation of the Christians in Israel is comparable to the situation experienced by the Jews in the Diaspora, when in any time of insecurity, communities would leave and search for a better future elsewhere."
"There is a paradox within the Christian communities here," says Ramon. "They are the most educated and belong to the middle and upper class. But there is more. In their education lies the key to their disappearance from the region. Since their curriculum is totally Westernized, including excellent knowledge of European languages, they have no problem emigrating - to France, Italy, Canada, South America, the US, Australia. They are welcome everywhere. The fear that no Christians will be left here to keep the Christian sects alive is serious. And the fear that all the churches, so strongly connected to the Christian tradition and history in the land of Jesus, will become mere tourist sites is a very powerful one," he says.
"We all have something to lose from the demographic impoverishment of the Christian communities here, who are caught in the middle by the Arab-Israeli conflict," Ramon continues. "They are most influential in promoting higher education here. We have figures showing that in many cases, their achievements in high school and on matriculation exams are the highest in Israel, higher than the Jewish students' - and high-quality education is certainly in the interest of all parties here."
