Bethlehem, West Bank, Dec. 25, (dpa/GNA) – In a sombre Christmas celebration in the Biblical birthplace of Jesus, Roman Catholic spiritual leader in the Holy Land Pierbattista Pizzaballa prayed for an end to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Italian-born Latin Patriarch delivered the midnight Christmas Mass in the Nativity Church in the presence of clergymen only.
“We ask Him, mighty God, to defeat sickness, evil, and death and give us back happy and serene days,” he said.
He also prayed to enlighten politicians and doctors seeking solutions for the common good.
“Everyone feels darkened, tired, exhausted, oppressed for too long under the heavy burden of this pandemic that besieges our lives, paralyzing relationships, putting politics, economics, culture, and society to a severe test. Ancient structural weaknesses have amplified, and no clear and shared solutions seem to be on the horizon.”
But he also sought to strike a hopeful note, saying the world was experiencing “an hour of grace.”
The pandemic, “with its burden of suffering and death, asks us to imagine a different world, made up of new solidarity and fraternal relationships, where possession is replaced by the gift, and the wealth of a few becomes good for everyone.”
A chair with Mahmoud Abbas’ name on it sat empty in the front row, as the pandemic caused the Palestinian president to miss the annual event for the first time since he took up his post in 2005.
Manger Square bordering the Church, adorned with a giant Christmas tree, was also empty of people due to a three-week lockdown to contain the coronavirus spread.
The thousands of foreign Christian pilgrims and tourists who packed the square during past Christmases were absent due to a coronavirus travel ban on foreign nationals.
Earlier on Thursday, boy scouts marching on the square and playing bagpipes welcomed Pizzaballa, who arrived in the southern West Bank city at the head of a solemn procession from nearby Jerusalem.
Greeted also by Franciscan priests dressed in white and black vestments, Pizzaballa bowed his head as he entered into the Church of Nativity, built on the traditional birthplace of Jesus, through its low “Door of Humility.”
Hilda, a 22-year-old Christian Palestinian from nearby Beit Jala, was one of few locals awaiting Pizzaballa’s arrival.
“Today Christmas looks sad,” she said. “It’s different this year than before when the square is usually full of people,” she told dpa.
Christians form a small minority in the predominantly Muslim Palestinian Territories.
Since the Israeli government closed its skies to foreign nationals in March in a bid to contain the pandemic, there has been no incoming tourism to Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Amid a coronavirus lockdown in the Palestinian areas, none of the normal activities such as choirs on a large stage took place in an overcast, rainy Bethlehem.
Also in Jerusalem, alleys in the walled Old City’s Christian Quarter were empty and shops closed, as Pizzaballa slowly drove through Jaffa Gate in a scaled-down convoy of five vehicles.
He visited a monastery on the road to Bethlehem, before passing through the Israeli-built concrete “security” wall into the Biblical town.
The West Bank has been under curfew, with no one allowed out of their homes from 7 pm until 6 am each night for the past few weeks, in a bid to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Home to over 4 million Palestinians, the territory has seen around 800 deaths from Covid-19.
GNA