“In the first place, John the Baptist makes us rediscover that God calls us from when we are in our mother’s womb.” The friars of the Custody of the Holy Land celebrated the solemnity of the birth of St John the Baptist in Ain Karem, a small town a few kilometres from Jerusalem. As every year, they gathered on the evening of 23 June in the shrine of St John of the Desert for the celebration of the First Vespers […]
Coronavirus is not stopping the music of the Custody of the Holy Land. This year again, the Terra Sancta Organ Festival, the largest festival of organ music in the Middle East and the Levant, inaugurates its new musical season on 5th October. Until the public can be allowed in once more, the concerts will be held without an audience and shown over the internet on the website www.tsorganfestival.org (where the complete programme can be consulted), on the festival’s YouTube channel, […]
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is at its halfway stage in the Holy Land. On the fifth day, the ecumenical prayer is hosted by the Franciscans of the Custody of the Holy Land, in St Saviour’s church, Jerusalem. It is an appointment that is “particularly significant in these difficult times we are living in, characterized by conflict, hatred, the desire for vendetta instead of yearning for unity and reconciliation,” the Custos of the Holy Land, fra Francesco Patton, […]
