The Custody of the Holy Land, the heads of the Churches of Jerusalem, diplomats, faithful and pilgrims flocked to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre to gather in prayer for the Holy Father. The Mass in suffrage of Pope Francis was celebrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa in the presence of numerous institutional figures, as well as the heads of the Oriental Churches who, through their participation, expressed their vicinity to the Church of Rome and the […]
The words of the pilgrim Egeria, who arrived in the Holy land at the end of the 4th century, echo once again under the sky of Jerusalem on a warm evening in early summer. The cultural event “The voice of Egeria” was held on Thursday 20 June, in St Helen’s courtyard in the Franciscan complex of St Saviour. It was a reading of passages selected from Itinerarium Egeriae (Egeria’s diary) with a musical accompaniment. The initiative The event is based […]
We met Br. Francesco Ielpo, appointed Custos of the Holy Land by His Holiness Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday, June 24. We reach him by phone, still immersed in his responsibilities as General Visitor of the Franciscan Provinces of Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria, before he begins his full-time service as Custos of the Holy Land in the coming days. Br. Francesco, what does it mean to be a Franciscan today? I answer as St. Francis did: when asked this question, […]
There is a special bond between Pontevico, a village in the province of Brescia (Italy) and the Magnificat of Jerusalem: although very distant from one another, they met on a special day, 22nd October when, at the ceremony of inauguration of the Civic Hall named after Giuseppe Ippoliti and Teresa Zani (the couple who saved Edith Fischhof and her sister Trude from the Nazi-Fascist fury in 1943), two musicians from the Magnificat School of Music, Willian Odeid and Faheem Khoury, […]
