Note #9141 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06098 Feb. 16, 2006
Holy Land Christians seek Vatican aid
Group claims dwindling minority will soon be all but 'extinct'
by Michele Green Ecumenical News International
JERUSALEM - A delegation of Israeli-Arab Christians visited the Vatican recently, urgently seeking aid for the struggling Christian communities of the Holy Land.
The delegation met earlier this month with members of a Holy See assembly that deals with the problems of Christians in the Middle East, including Israel, and sometimes approves projects for local communities. The delegates submitted a plan to help revive Christian communities in the Holy Land, whose numbers are dwindling.
The plan includes obtaining more support from Christians abroad, especially pilgrims visiting holy sites in Israel and the Palestinian territories, to alleviate the sense of neglect and isolation felt by the Christian community there.
One representative of the group said it is time for churches abroad to take a more active role in revitalizing Christian communities in the Holy Land. "We are a dying congregation," said Dr. Raed Mualem, head of Mar Elias University in the Galilee town of Ibillin.
Mualem told Israel's Haaretz newspaper that Christians soon will be all but "extinct" in Galilee because of emigration. Christians now make up 1.7 per cent of Israel's population of 6 million - about 110,000 people.
If the high rate of loss continues, Mualem said, the number of Christians living in Israel will drop to less than half of 1 per cent by 2020.
About 40,000 Christians live in the Palestinian territories. They are leaving at a rate of about 2,000 per year. Christians, who often have been wealthier and better educated than their neighbors, have increasingly sought to make better lives abroad rather than live as a small minority caught between the predominantly Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Muslim populations.
The plan submitted to the Vatican calls for more direct support of congregations, institutions, private Christian hospitals and schools, as well as the establishment of a cultural center for Christians and community television and radio stations.
"Projects of this sort ensure a better future, not only for Christians but for the entire Israeli Arab population," Mualem said.
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