Fifty days after Easter, on the day of Pentecost, Jerusalem remembers the effusion of the Holy Spirit that Jesus gave to his disciples gathered in the Cenacle. The Custos of the Holy Land, fra Francesco Patton, presided over the celebrations of the vigil in St Saviour’s church and those of the day at the Cenacle. St Saviour and the Cenacle St Saviour’s church and the Cenacle have a special bond. The Cenacle, on Mount Zion, is and was the first […]
Once again this year, the shrine of St John in the Mountain in Ain Karem opened its doors to the local citizens for a meeting to study the historical, religious and cultural aspects of this place. According to tradition, Ain Karem is the birthplace of John the Baptist, in agreement with the gospels that situate the house of Zachariah and his wife Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, here. Today this area is part of the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem and […]
On Tuesday 1 October, Fra Toufic Bou Mehri, of the Custody of the Holy Land, closed the gates behind him of the Franciscan convent in Tyre, a port city in the south of Lebanon, and together with his confrere, Fra Pierre Richa, left for Beirut. “A missile fell a few dozen metres from our convent,” says Father Toufic. “Two children who had sought shelter with us were injured, hit by some detritus. We are not here to be heroes, but […]
On the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the pilgrimage of peace of St. Francis in the Holy Land, Brother Francesco Patton, Custos of the Holy Land, pressed from a tablet, directly from the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the button that lit the largest Christmas tree in the world in the city of Gubbio, in Umbria - Italy. Br FRANCESCO PATTON, ofm Custos of the Holy Land "Technology allows you to do things that were once impossible: laying […]
