On Wednesday 28 May, on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, the celebrations followed on one another for the solemnity of the Ascension of Jesus. From the early afternoon, the Franciscan friars of the Custody of the Holy Land gathered in prayer in the place which holds the memory of this event. This year, the celebration took on an even deeper meaning, as the Custodial Vicar, Fra Ibrahim Faltas, stressed: “We are witnesses of a sign of communion: all the […]
The photographic exhibition entitled “The guardians of Christ’s tomb,” the work of the French photographer Thomas Coex, was presented at the Royal Basilica of St Francis the Great in Madrid on Friday 18 October. Fra Tony Choukri, treasurer of the Custody and Fra Luis Quintana, deputy curator of the exhibition, were also present. The photos are by Thomas Coex, a professional photographer for the Agence France Press (AFP). He has a long experience of living and working in the Holy […]
With deep emotion, we remember Father Stanislao Loffreda, born in Monteprandone (Italy), eminent biblical scholar and archaeologist, for decades the soul of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, where he also served as director. An internationally renowned scholar, he devoted much of his life to the excavations at Capernaum, making decisive contributions to the understanding of the House of Peter and the structures of the Gospel village, and provided fundamental studies on Palestinian pottery of the Roman and Byzantine periods, […]
For Advent, the time when we wait and prepare for the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus, the Custody of the Holy Land, through its channels, is offering two important initiatives to accompany the faithful on the path towards Christmas. “Inside the Nativity scene” To commemorate the 800th anniversary of the Nativity scene in Greccio – the result of the creativity of St Francis of Assisi who set it up for the first time in Greccio in 1223 – the Custody […]
