Armed Christians in Gaza speak to the Pope every night.

Every night at Gaza’s Holy Family Church, a cell phone rings and a parish priest answers. The voice on the other end of the line is Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church and spiritual leader of a global congregation of 1.4 billion people.

For more than a year, the pope has consoled hundreds of Palestinian Christians with nightly calls to his church as fighting rages in the streets outside and Israeli warplanes pound much of the surrounding city to rubble.

For those who live in difficult conditions in the churchyard and are now preparing for a second Christmas surrounded by war, regular meetings with the Pope assure them that they have not been forgotten.

“It calms our fears and makes us feel cared for,” says retired surgeon Atala Tarazi. “The Pope will give us his blessing, and if the relationship is good, he will pray with us.”

The entire Christian community in Gaza – up to 1,000 people – sought sanctuary in October 2023 in the compound of the Catholic Holy Family Church and the nearby Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyos, the two Christian houses of worship in the territory.

Speaking about the conflict in Gaza during his annual Christmas greeting on Saturday, the Pope said: “Children were bombed yesterday. This is cruel; This is not a war,” he told CBS. Sixty minutes The program that will be held in May: “Every night at seven I will speak to the parish of Gaza.” . . They tell me about what’s going on there. It is very difficult, very difficult. . . Sometimes they tell me they are hungry. There is a lot of suffering.”

On December 22, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, presided over Christmas at the Holy Family Church in a rare foreign visit permitted by Israeli authorities in the besieged Strip.

Despite the war outside, priests in cassocks regularly hold masses in Gaza’s two churches under domes painted with biblical scenes. Some classes have begun in a churchyard for second-year schoolchildren, sparked by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 war against Israel, in which the Palestinian militant group killed nearly 1,200 people and took nearly 250 hostages.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip.

The number of Christians sheltering in churches has decreased this year as they were able to leave the Rafan crossing with Egypt, which was open until it was captured by Israel on May 6.

According to George Akrush, the official of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, this displaced about 650 people in the two churches. Families sleep on mattresses and survive on canned food and lentils, with no fresh meat, fruit or vegetables. Aid organizations send the material, some humanitarian convoys are organized by the patriarch.

“It’s very cold in Gaza, so we’re trying to send warm stuff,” said Akrosh. “We want to give them boots and children’s clothes and warm clothes. There is also a severe shortage of mattresses, but most people sleep on the floor, but the Israelis refuse to let them in.

An Israeli official said Tuesday that a truck had arrived ahead of the cardinal’s visit. “This shipment includes mattresses, warm clothing and additional winter accommodation items, as well as other types of assistance selected by the mission,” he said.

According to Akrush, the patriarch tried to send supplies to 6,000 to 7,000 people in each convoy so that help would also reach Muslim neighbors. “We do not make any difference between Christians and Muslims,” ​​he said. “This is the mission of the church.

Tarazi refused to leave Gaza to join his grown children in Australia: he wanted to see the outcome of the war and hoped the property he still owned could be passed on to his descendants. But he didn’t think he’d spend another Christmas in church.

“I didn’t think we were going to stay here until we were going to bed every night hearing the bombings,” he said. Several shells landed near the church.

In the year The Catholic church, built in the 1960s to house Christians among the Palestinian refugees who were forced to migrate to Gaza when Israel was founded, is named after the Holy Family passed through the territory during the biblical Flight from Egypt.

The complex includes a monastery, a school and several other buildings, one of which houses 73 people with disabilities. In the year In December 2023, a rocket attack destroyed the building, and the residents moved to another on the campus, where monks still look after their care.

Huge swathes of Gaza City have been reduced to rubble-strewn deserts under Israeli bombardment, and most residents have fled south on Israeli orders.

The fact that the churches were houses of worship and the Pope’s interest in the safety of the imprisoned Christians seemed to give them some protection. But still sniper fire, shells and missiles hit both buildings, and people were killed in the first months of the war.

In the year In December 2023, an elderly woman and her daughter were killed by sniper fire while walking in the compound of the Holy Family. The Latin Patriarch accused Israeli soldiers of carrying out the killings, but denied that the Israeli army was involved.

Two months ago, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a family shelter in the St. Porphyrys compound, killing 17 people. Israel has promised to investigate, but the results have not been announced.

Atallah al-Amash, an accountant, lost his seven-month-old daughter Joel and his wife’s parents in that attack. He then moved his wife and three-year-old son Ibrahim to the Catholic Church.

“Everything feels negative, and from the time we wake up to the time we go to sleep, there is a heavy feeling,” Amash said. “We’re waiting for (the war) to end, but it’s not over.”

His little son plays with other children in the courtyard of the church, but Amash said that he and his wife “have nothing to think about and nothing to do, we just sit there.”

The building where the family lives in Gaza City was destroyed in July. Since then, they rarely leave the compound. Amash is optimistic about the future outside the area. “If I get a job abroad, I’ll go,” he said. But now we have to wait until the war is over.

Samar Tarazi, sheltered in St. Porphyry’s, was preparing to leave for Australia when the Rafah crossing was closed. His wife and three children left earlier, so now the family is separated.

A member of the large Tarazi Christian tribe in Gaza and a cousin of Atala Tarazi, he left St. Porphyus to make a film for a media services company.

“There is complete devastation outside,” he said. “Not a single building or window is intact. I would say 80 percent of the buildings are now unlivable.

He wants to leave Gaza after the war because “even the Christians are becoming a small minority”.

But Arkush, a member of the Latin Patriarchate, said it was too early to write the future of the Christian community in Gaza. He expects another 150 people to leave after the war, but many chose to stay when the crossing was open, he said.

They said, “This is the land of our ancestors. We are not foreigners.” I expect the numbers to decrease, but for the Christian presence to end – I don’t think so.

Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv. Cartography by Aditi Bhandari