Intervention of Rev. Rino ROSSI, Director of the "Domus Galileae", Corazin (ISRAEL), auditor

In the first chapter of the Instrumentum Laboris, speaking about apostolicity and missionary vocation, it says: “In being apostolic, our Churches have a special mission to bring the Gospel to the whole world”. I am a presbyter of the Diocese of Rome on a mission at the Domus Galilaeae International Center which is found on the upper part of the Mount of Beatitudes.
With the seminarians and young people who operate in our center, we have visited very many Christian families of the various rites of the Holy Land, Jordan and Cyprus. We came across so much suffering, the same problems that are found in the Church in other parts of the world: the crisis in so many families, the abandonment by young people of religious practices, the problem of abortion, being closed to life, gambling which destroys entire families, the dream of being able to go abroad to have an easier life. Not to mention drugs, pornography, the spread of sects.
When the Domus Galilaeae opened, a large number of Jews started visiting us. In the last year alone, more than a hundred thousand came. They are drawn by the welcome and the beauty of the house. Many of them do not know the Church or Jesus Christ. They ask us many questions about our faith. Very often they come back. We feel we have to welcome them and serve them as brothers.
I think that the Holy Spirit whom we invoked at the start of this Synod loves our faithful with an immense love and wants to save them from the attacks of the devil who seduces them, as only he knows how to do. He is the true enemy. But Christ has power over him and he gave this power to the Church, to you pastors. We have an enormous responsibility to the lost sheep of our parishes. Woe is me if I do not evangelize them! The Oriental Fathers in the first centuries, faced by the challenges of their time, in a pagan world, elaborated an itinerary for Christian initiation: the Catechumenate. The Church like a mother, in a slow journey with stages, handles eternal life for her children. Today we have to offer to our Christians a Catechumenate that is suited to their condition of being baptized.
The pastors of the Holy Land are aware of the challenges that await us today, and I can also bear witness to this with the initiative of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who, in communion with the Greek-Melchite and Maronite archbishops, opened a missionary seminary Redemptoris Mater, to prepare missionary presbyters for the new Evangelization.

[00155-02.02] [UD017] [Original text: Italian]