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 […]
There is no pilgrim who has not lingered to gaze, at least in the last three centuries, at the painting which dominates the upper part of the Edicule of the Holy Sepulchre, above the low door which leads to the chapel of the Angel. It is the Resurrection of Christ, oil on canvas, without any doubt the work of Paolo De Matteis, the painter born in Piano Vetrale di Orria, today in the province of Salerno (Italy), and dated to […]
Christians in Syria are getting ready to celebrate a Christmas which on the one hand is “without changes” and on the other totally “different” from when, on 8 December, the fighters (as they are called here) overthrew the regime of Assad. Celebrating Christmas “In all the churches in the country we are getting ready to celebrate Christmas: we have set up the nativity scenes and the Christmas trees and we will have a triduum of preparation with the faithful, especially […]
They are defined “bridges between the Holy Land and Christians all over the world.” There are more than eighty Commissariats of the Holy Land, Franciscan convents or houses with the task of collecting donations for the Holy Land and organizing pilgrimages, in more than forty countries around the world. However, not many people know that the “father” of all the Commissariats of the Holy Land is that of Naples, which still operates today, centuries after it was founded and which […]
