On Monday 20 January, at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Custos of the Holy Land, Francesco Patton, celebrated Mass in front of a group of thirty-five pilgrims from Mexico. At the end of the celebration, the Custos gave Fra Josè Alcaraz, commissary of the Holy Land for Mexico, a reliquary containing a fragment of stone from Mary’s home in Nazareth. This precious reliquary, to go on a pilgrimage to Mexico and other Latin American countries, has a […]
The day after the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, the Custos of the Holy Land, Fra Francesco Patton, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Latins, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, make an appeal to pilgrims from the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, the heart of Christianity and a Jubilee site, to come back to visit the Holy Places with confidence. “The pilgrimage is absolutely safe. It is time to look up and return to Jerusalem to also bring joy to […]
A brown habit and a backpack on his shoulders. A suitcase “always ready” for departure. This is how Fra Francesco Patton, Custos of the Holy Land, likes to describe his way of travelling and walking in this world, which until 2016 had only been a destination of a pilgrimage. In the book-length interview with Roberto Cetera “Like a Pilgrimage. My days in the Holy Land,” in bookshops from 10 January, published by Edizioni Terra Santa (with a preface by Pope […]
The bond between the Custody of the Holy Land and the rest of the world is kept alive by a network of Commissariats with the task of promoting the mission of the Franciscans in the Holy Land. They include the Commissariat in Washington, the oldest in the United States and which recently celebrated the 125th anniversary of its foundation. A network for the Holy Land Among the initiatives organized by the Commissariats in support of the charities of the Custody […]
