Every night without fail, the cell phone rings at the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza, and the parish priest answers. The voice at the end of the line is Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church and spiritual leader of the world's 1.4bn flock.
More than a year ago, the pope called a vigil at the church to comfort the hundreds of Palestinian Christians living there as fighting in the streets outside and Israeli warplanes pounded much of the surrounding city.
For those who live in dire conditions in the church building and are now preparing for their second Christmas surrounded by war, regular contact with the pope assures them that they have not been forgotten.
“It calms our fears and makes us feel cared for,” said Attallah Tarazi, a retired doctor. “The Pope gives us his blessings, and he prays with us that the communication is good.”
Pope Francis during one of his daily video calls with the church in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Ghj8gRGfOw
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The entire Christian community in Gaza – up to 1,000 people – will seek sanctuary in October 2023 in the building of the Catholic Church of the Holy Family and the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, the only two Christian houses of worship in the area.
The Pope said of the conflict in Gaza in his annual Christmas greetings on Saturday: “Yesterday the children were bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war.” He told CBS's Sixty minutes May: “Every night at seven o'clock I talk to the parish of Gaza.” . . They told me what happened there. It is very difficult, very difficult. . . Sometimes they are hungry and tell me things. There is a lot of suffering.”
On December 22, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, led the Christmas celebration at the Holy Family church in a rare foreign visit allowed by the Israeli authorities to enter the besieged area.
Despite the war outside, priests in cassocks regularly conduct mass in Gaza's two churches under a house painted with biblical images. Some studies have begun in the church buildings of the missing children in the second year of school after the war caused by Hamas of October 7 2023 attack on Israel, in which the Palestinian group killed about 1,200 people and held about 250 prisoners.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the brutal attacks that Israel has since launched on the Gaza Strip.
The number of Christians living in churches has decreased this year because many have been able to leave the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which was open until it was seized by Israel on May 6.
That left about 650 people in the two churches, said George Akroush, an official of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem. Families sleep on mattresses and live on canned food and lentils, with no meat, fruit or vegetables. Aid agencies are sending supplies, while other aid convoys have been organized by the patriarch.
“We are trying to send warm things because it is very cold in Gaza,” said Akroush. “We want to give them boots and baby clothes and warm clothes. There is also a very short supply of mattresses, but the Israelis refuse to let them in, although most people sleep on the floor.
An Israeli official said on Tuesday that an aid truck had arrived ahead of the cardinal's visit. “This transport includes mattresses, warm clothes and additional winter items, as well as other types of assistance selected by the mission,” they said.
Akroush said the patriarch tried to send between 6,000 and 7,000 people on each trip so that aid would reach Muslim neighbors. “We do not differentiate between Christians and Muslims,” he said. “This is the work of the church.”
Tarazi refused to leave Gaza to join his older children in Australia: he wanted to see the results of the war and hoped that his property in the strip could be passed on to his descendants. But he didn't expect to spend another Christmas in the church.
“I didn't think we would stay this long, we sleep hearing the explosions every night,” he said. Many shells have settled near the church.
Built in the 1960s to house Christians among the Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee Gaza when Israel was founded in 1948, the Catholic church was named after the passage of the Holy Family through the region during their biblical flight to Egypt.
Its complex includes a convent, a school and several other buildings, one of which houses 73 disabled people. A rocket strike in December 2023 destroyed the building, and its residents moved to another compound, where the nuns still care for them.
Large areas of Gaza City have been reduced to rubble-filled wasteland by Israeli bombing, and many residents have fled south on Israeli orders.
The status of churches as houses of worship and the Pope's interest in the welfare of captive Christians seems to have provided some protection. But still sniper fire, shells and missiles hit both places, and people were killed in the first months of the war.
In December 2023, an old woman and her daughter were shot dead by sniper fire as they walked inside the Holy Family building. The Latin Patriarchate accused Israeli forces of the killing, but the Israeli army denied involvement.
Two months ago an Israeli strike destroyed the families living in the Saint Porphyrius building, killing 17 people. Israel has promised to investigate, but no results have been announced.
Attallah al-Amash, a banker, lost his seven-month-old daughter, Joelle, and his wife's parents in the attack. He then moved his wife and three-year-old son, Ibrahim, to a Catholic church.
“I feel like everything is wrong, and there's a heavy feeling from the moment we wake up to the time we go to bed,” Amash said. “We are waiting for (the war) to end, but it is not ending.”
His little boy is playing with other children in the church yard, but Amash said he and his wife “don't think about anything and have nothing to do, we just sit”.
The building in Gaza City where the family lived was destroyed in July. Since then they rarely leave this town. Amash is optimistic about the future outside the enclave. “If I get a job abroad, I will go,” he said. But now we have to wait for the war to end.
Samer Tarazi, who lives in Saint Porphyrius, was preparing to travel to Australia when the Rafah crossing was closed. His wife and three children had already left, so now the family is separated.
A member of a large group of Christians in Tarazi in Gaza, and a cousin of Attallah Tarazi, he leaves Saint Porphyrius to make a film for his media services company when he judges it safe.
“Outside there is total destruction,” he said. “Not a single building is undamaged, or has a window. I would say 80 percent of the buildings are now unlivable.”
He also wants to leave Gaza after the war because “Christians are becoming a small minority”.
But Arkoush, of the Latin Patriarchate, said it was too early to write the fate of the Christian community in Gaza. He expects another 150 people to leave after the war, but said many chose to stay when given the chance to leave when the crossing opened.
They said: 'This is the land of our ancestors, and we are not foreigners.' I expect the numbers to go down, but the Christian presence is gone – I don't think so. “
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv. Sculpture by Aditi Bhandari