Print Issue: May 30, 2002

Holy Land Fund-Raiser Seeks To Help Franciscans Sow Seeds Of Peace

Archbishop John F. Donoghue, pictured with Father Peter Vasko, OFM, left, president of the Holy Land Foundation, has pledged to give the foundation half of an annual archdiocesan collection each year for jobs, scholarships and housing for Christians in the Holy Land. (Photos by Linda Schaefer/Archdiocese of Atlanta)

By Gretchen Keiser, Staff Writer

ATLANTA - While fighting engulfed the birthplace of Jesus, hope for peace was being kept alive in Atlanta where people who love the Holy Land gathered in support.

Determined to build peace in the fragmented and violence-torn land, lay Catholics, priests and bishops offered their financial support and their prayers. A formal dinner at the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel April 20 raised funds for the Holy Land Foundation, which was established in 1994 to preserve the Christian presence in the Holy Land and to provide housing, college scholarships and job placements for struggling families and individuals. This was the annual fund-raiser for the Holy Land Foundation and a meeting of its board of trustees.

Archbishop John F. Donoghue gave the foundation half of the annual Palm Sunday collection held in the archdiocese this year for the Holy Land. He presented a check for $77,000, half of all that had been collected from parishes to date. He announced the archdiocese will continue to give half the annual collection to the Holy Land Foundation in future years.

Archbishop Donoghue, who has visited the Holy Land several times, recalled the visit by Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem to Atlanta last June when he pleaded for help for the minority Christian community in the Holy Land.

"Sadness arose from the message the patriarch brought with him, calling for help," the archbishop said.

Father Peter Vasko, OFM, president of the Holy Land Foundation, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem, accepted the archbishop's donation which was given in the midst of the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Father Vasko said Franciscan friars were remaining inside the church compound to be "messengers of peace" like their founder, St. Francis of Assisi. Twenty-two friars and three nuns were holed up inside the compound with about 200 Palestinians. The siege lasted 40 days, caused an estimated $4 million in damage to Bethlehem, and destroyed the Franciscans' parish hall at the Church of the Nativity.

The night of the dinner, day 16 of the siege, Father Vasko said those inside the compound needed food and water, medical assistance and removal of decaying corpses. All of those humanitarian needs "have been refused to us by the Israeli government," Father Vasko said, relaying a message from Franciscans within the compound. "Unfortunately we do not see any immediate solution to this problem. Both sides regrettably remain adamant as to their personal conditions for surrender."

Father Vasko said from his perspective the Israelis and the Palestinians "are locked in a peace/security conundrum," which cannot be solved "until the Palestinians have achieved some control over their own lands."

"The Palestinians...do not pose an existential threat to Israel," Father Vasko said. "They can demoralize the country. They cannot conquer it."

"Conversely," he said, "the Israelis do not have the power to silence the Palestinians."

Bishop John Nevins of Venice, Fla., who is on the foundation board, quoted from St. Paul, saying, "make sure you take care of the household of faith."

"They (Christians in the Holy Land) are under very difficult circumstances right now and I'm sure they are looking to us," he said.

Joseph C. Donnelly, international delegate to the United Nations for Caritas Internationalis, spoke at the dinner. Involved in the Holy Land for 15 years, and a resident of Jerusalem for seven years, he spoke of the human faces of the conflict and of the sacredness of the land, which those who live there often lose sight of, he said. "These people whose home it is rarely can enjoy the blessing that it is."

Joseph C. Donnelly speaks at the Holy Land Foundation fund-raiser in Atlanta April 20, describing the poor, small Catholic community that struggles to survive in the Holy Land.

Part of his work is to listen. "It has always seemed to me that the Holy Land is congested with human traffic . . . a quagmire of what cannot be, never was, but is still hoped for."

The Franciscan order has been present in the Holy Land for almost 800 years. "They listen," he said. "They are always listening - in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Cyprus . . . We hopefully are seeds of peace."

Quoting the famous statement of Pope Paul VI - "if you want peace, work for justice" - Donnelly said "justice makes its demands upon us in two ways."

"We work to meet the immediate need . . . We work to peacefully address the injustice. Many risk their lives not to be indifferent. The Holy Land Foundation is one such instrument of peace seeking justice."

"In the land where Christianity was born, there remains a poor, small church," he said. "That is okay, but they want to remain at least what they are."

"These are giving people, praying people, vulnerable people."

Archbishop John F. Donoghue and Karen Carroll of St. Andrew Church, Roswell, were each presented with a framed papal decoration, the Gold Cross of Honor established by Pope Leo XIII for their support of the Holy Land Foundation. Shown front row, l-r, are Father Peter Vasko, OFM, foundation president, Carroll and Brother Callistus Welch, OFM, treasurer. In the back row is Denise Scalzo, foundation vice president.

Denise Scalzo, vice president of the foundation, said in an interview that Christians reportedly number 150,000 out of six million people in the Holy Land. But in the last 18 months, 1,600 Palestinians were killed, she said, including an unknown number of Christian Palestinians.

Donnelly held up a photograph of a Palestinian boy he had taken 10 years ago at a church on Easter Monday. He said he keeps the photograph in front of him constantly and wonders whether the boy has been killed, whether he, like so many Palestinian Christians, has left the Holy Land and emigrated to another country or whether he could have become a Franciscan.