Fr Romanelli: “Can a city like Gaza be blessed today?”

On the Feast of Corpus Christi, the small community of the Holy Family performed the Eucharistic blessing towards the four cardinal points from the church square. The parish priest said: “From here we also blessed the towns that no longer exist: Rafah, Deir el Balah, Jabalia, Beit Lahia and the whole world. We blessed every single person, asking for a change of heart and peace for all.”

Gaza (AsiaNews) - In Gaza, the journey of the Holy Family parish continues amidst the hardships that continue to characterise life in the Strip, in a situation that is still far from overcoming the war. In this context, the small Christian community – whose numbers have halved during these three years of war – continues to offer, through its actions, a perspective of faith on the reality of the conflict. The school year is drawing to a close and preparations are underway for the summer camp for children and young people. On Sunday, however, a particularly significant moment was the celebration of Corpus Christi in the square in front of the church, with the Eucharistic blessing of the four cardinal points, even amidst the devastation of Gaza. The parish priest, Fr Gabriel Romanelli, reflected on the meaning of this gesture in the videos he posts daily on the parish’s YouTube channel. Below are some excerpts from his reflections taken from the videos published in recent days.

Can Gaza be blessed?

Some might think: with all the terrible things that are happening, now they’re even blessing them…

No. We do not bless evil; we bless the people who live in this place. We bless one another. We bless the land so that it may bear fruit. We ask that the souls of the departed may be blessed and may contemplate the face of God.

From Gaza, we have blessed not only the four cardinal points here in the city, but the whole of the Middle East and the world. We have also blessed the cities that no longer exist: Rafah, Deir el Balah, Gaza City itself, Jabalia, Beit Lahia, Beit Hanun. And then we have also blessed Israel and Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina, Italy, Spain…

We did not bless the evil things that groups, individuals or states may do. We blessed the people, every single person, so that they might receive God’s blessing, the conversion of the soul for which we always pray. May they discover the truth, the love of God manifested in Jesus, and thus attain eternal life.

So today we performed this act of blessing with the Most Holy Sacrament. Just yesterday we received some sad news: the murder of a young, pregnant woman. The situation is so terrible throughout our area. This woman was from the neighbourhood here, the wife of one of our neighbours, and she was killed by two members of another group. It seems it all started with a clash between children: they began throwing stones and then the older, more vicious ones joined in. May the Lord deliver us from such evil.

But precisely for this reason, it is wonderful that the blessing of the Blessed Sacrament can reach every corner of the world today, just as Pope Leo XIV did in Madrid.

Even now, whilst we were recording in the parish hall, we heard explosions: they were obviously not directed at us, but they were in this area nonetheless. So we took the children to church. This is the situation everywhere in Gaza.

Yet in our Christian community I never hear anyone cursing.

Christians are not angels, they are not saints, not even those in this part of the Holy Land that is Gaza in Palestine. But they know how to place themselves in God’s hands. They know how to suffer, like the rest of the population, entrusting themselves to Almighty God who, for inscrutable reasons that we cannot understand, allows evil to bring about greater blessings.

God is not responsible for evil: human beings – man or woman – are responsible for evil. We are responsible for the evils we commit, individually, but also for the evil of war, which lies in the hands of many people.

We must bless God; we must pray for everyone and, from the depths of our hearts, ask the Lord for grace, conversion, forgiveness of sins and peace for all. May wars end, may injustices end, and may the civilisation of God, the civilisation of love, truly reign.

I bless you all from Gaza.

* Missionary of the Incarnate Word, parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza