Custos of the Holy Land: ‘Return as pilgrims’
January 09, 2026
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CWN Editor's Note: Noting that pilgrimages generate economic activity that benefits the local Christian community and helps prevent Christian emigration, the Franciscan provincial of the Holy Land encouraged the return of pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
“Fear is not overcome with words; it is overcome with witness,” Father Francesco Ielpo, OFM, said on January 7. “Seeing Christians from all over the world come to the Holy Land to visit the holy places generates hope and strengthens the reason for coming here—not to see a museum, but to encounter a living Church.”
In the 14th century, the Holy See entrusted the care of the holy sites in the Holy Land to the care of the Franciscan order.
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