Visiting bishops celebrate Mass at Holy Family church in Gaza

(Vatican Radio) Bishops from across Europe, North America and South Africa visited the tiny Christian community of Gaza yesterday, as part of a yearly pilgrimage aimed at showing support for Christians living in the Holy Land. Susy Hodges is travelling with the Bishops: read her report below, or listen…

“Gaza is a large open-air prison.” This is how the people of this sliver of territory sandwiched between Israel and the Mediterranean sea commonly describe their homeland when meeting people from outside. The Gaza strip has a population of nearly 1.8 million people, and yet local aid workers told us that only around 200 people are allowed to exit the territory each day – usually only in cases of severe illness or because they have been accepted to study abroad. Over 75% of the Gaza’s population is unemployed and grinding poverty is widespread, with most of the people depending on relief aid to get by. So, when you see the crowds of people milling about on the streets, you get the impression of a place with huge numbers of people with nothing to do and above all with nowhere to go.

But despite these depressing statistics and dramatic living conditions, we found a population that was remarkably resilient and cheerful and there was no doubting the warmth of their hospitality. At the Holy Family Latin church, the tiny but vibrant Catholic community turned out in force to give us a hero’s welcome with bands playing a jaunty tune when we arrived for Sunday Mass. They get few foreign visitors and they were genuinely delighted that the organisers of the bishops’ pilgrimage had managed to overcome the considerable bureaucratic hurdles to organise this visit. Christians may be small in number in Gaza but as a community they definitely punch above their weight, with schools and other institutions that are growing in size.

Our final port of call in Gaza was an NGO that provides education and training for people with impaired hearing called El Amal, which we were told means Hope. An appropriate name, in a place where hope would seem to be in very short supply. And yet, as a number of Christians reminded me, hope is the last thing that dies.