{"id":198,"date":"2008-12-29T19:42:43","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T19:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/papal-visit-to-the-holy-land-a.html"},"modified":"2008-12-29T19:42:43","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T19:42:43","slug":"papal-visit-to-the-holy-land-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/papal-visit-to-the-holy-land-a.html","title":{"rendered":"Papal visit to the Holy Land: Another victim of the violence?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The escalating warfare in the birthplace of the Prince of Peace<\/a> may claim another victim: Benedict’s visit to Israel this May. According to CNS<\/a>, Vatican sources have said a worsening of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could alter the pope’s travel plans.
\nSuch a visit could provide the impetus for a cessation or lessening of hostilities, but the pope has to get there first, and he is undoubtedly (well, hopefully) weighing his words carefully. From the CNS coverage of Benedict’s noontime blessing address yesterday:<\/p>\n

“I am deeply saddened for the dead, the wounded, the material damage, and the sufferings and tears of the people who are the victims of this tragic sequence of attacks and reprisals,” the pope said.
\n“The earthly homeland of Jesus cannot continue to be a witness to such bloodshed, which is repeated without end! I implore the end of this violence, which must be condemned in all its forms, and a restoration of the truce in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
\nThe pope called for a fresh demonstration of “humanity and wisdom in everyone who has responsibility in the situation.”
\n[snip]
\nThe Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, told Vatican Radio Dec. 27 that the latest escalation of violence was a provocation by both sides, and showed that both Hamas and Israel were caught up in a mentality of conflict.
\n“Hamas is a prisoner of a logic of hatred, Israel of a logic of trusting in force as the best response to hatred. They need to keep looking for a different way out, even if it seems impossible,” Father Lombardi said.
\nThe spokesman said Israel’s attack on Gaza was notable for its intensity and the number of victims.
\n“Certainly it will be a very hard blow for Hamas. At the same time, it’s quite probable that there will be innocent victims, in fact many of them; hatred will increase and the hopes for peace will once again fade,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Vatican has often been seen as tilting toward the Palestinians in terms of sympathies, and these comments seem to strike the kind of balance that will not be welcome by either side–and thus a potential complicating factor for the Vatican.
\nOne reason Rome is seen as pro-Palestinian is that the dwindling Christian community is largely made up of Palestinian Arabs. In a sense, as in Iraq, they are caught in the middle, squeezed by both sides. This is often lost on Westerners as we sing sweet Christmas carols about that faraway manger.
\nThat vise was exemplified by a story by Austen Ivereigh in Our Sunday Visitor<\/a> of Dec. 21. The story is available online only to subscribers, but in it…<\/p>\n


\n…Ivereigh writes about the Cremisan winery<\/a> of the Salesians of Don Bosco on a hill outside Bethlehem. It is a wine of choice for Christians clustered in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and those in Israel.
\nAs Ivereigh writes, “Cremisan’s distinctive ‘David’s Tower’ and ‘Shepherds’ Fields’ wine is a vital symbol of the identity of Arab Christians: Drinking Cremisan wine sets them them apart from Israeli Jews (who have kosher wine) and from Muslim Arabs (who do not drink alcohol).”
\nMoreover, the wine has begun to be exported to Germany and the United Kingdom to compensate for the drop in Christian visitors to the Holy Land. Cremisan’s “Messa” altar wine has proved popular with abbeys and large churches in the United Kingdom, who buy the wine as a means of directly supporting the Christians of the West Bank.
\nBut since early November, Israeli soldiers have been refusing to let the wine through the Hebron checkpoint. Ivereigh continues:<\/p>\n

Cremisan wine “has an important social value,” said Father Franco Ronzani, the Salesian rector. “The ones who profit from the wine sales are not us.” Some 30 families depend directly on the winery, which supports many projects among the poor in Bethlehem, including a technical school and a bakery where the poor gather to collect loaves.
\nIt feels like the final straw for the elderly Italian Salesians living in the friary. The house looks out over the 30-foot-high concrete Wall of Separation, which the Israelis say is necessary for their security; but its path makes clear that its purpose is also to protect illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and to annex lands that once belonged to the Christian families of Bethlehem.
\nThe loss of Christian lands, and therefore grape supplies, combined with the obstacles to free movement of people and goods since the intifadah in 2000, is the main reason why Cremisan production has dropped from more than 700,000 bottles to just 200,000 in recent years.
\nWhen it is extended next year, the wall will snake behind Cremisan to include an illegal Jewish settlement, thus severing Cremisan from Bethlehem — and from the workers who tend the vineyards and make the wine.
\n[snip] If it is unable to reach its customers in Israel and abroad, the winery will be forced to close; and its demise will be a major blow to the continuity of the Christian communities in Palestine and Israel.
\nFather Ronzani puts it simply. “We want to continue to exist,” he said. “We’ve been making wine for 120 years, and we want to carry on for another hundred.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The escalating warfare in the birthplace of the Prince of Peace may claim another victim: Benedict’s visit to Israel this May. According to CNS, Vatican sources have said a worsening of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could alter the pope’s travel plans. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}