Follow Pope Leo’s Lead: Defend the Christian Presence in the Holy Land

In a beautiful address to Eastern Christian pilgrims in Rome, Pope Leo XIV showed this week that the tenets of our Catholic Faith are more than platitudes. In particular, he applied Catholic principles plainly and unflinchingly to the plight of the Christian communities in Bethlehem, located in the West Bank, and in Gaza—defending their right to remain secure where they are. By implication, the pope’s address invites us all to stand in solidarity with these churches and against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in the region.

When we have the courage to articulate it clearly and without compromise, the Gospel of Jesus Christ always stands as a sign of contradiction—with real and sometimes costly implications. My fellow members of the pro-life movement know that well. So do Christian defenders of marriage and childhood innocence against the LGBTQ+ movement. 

But Pope Leo now reminds us to stand up for another hard truth: this same Gospel tells us that there is such a thing as a Holy Land, a historical place that mankind ought to hold sacred because it is where God worked out His plan of salvation for us.

Quoting his namesake Pope Leo XIII and Pope St. John Paul the Great, our new pope said that “the work of human redemption began in the East,” giving the Christian community in the Holy Land “a unique and privileged role as the original setting where the Church was born.”

Pope Leo also quoted Pope Francis’ frequent references to what he called “martyr Churches,” applying that phrase first and foremost to the Church of “the Holy Land” and only after that to the churches in Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere.

“I thank God for those Christians—Eastern and Latin alike—who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them,” Pope Leo said. “Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!”

Pope Leo’s courageous message could not be timelier. As I wrote in January of this year, just after visiting Palestinian communities in the West Bank, my friend Alice Kisiya will tell you how “the Israeli military and Civil Administration have used” their campaign against Gaza since October 7, 2023, “as an ‘excuse’ to even more aggressively undermine Palestinians’ rightful claims to their own homes, businesses, and farmlands” in and around Bethlehem.

But while the lives of Palestinian Christians in Gaza and the West Bank are surrounded by politics, the sacredness of their communities is far greater than any partisan political concern. These Eastern Church communities, in fact, are “the beating heart of the free world,” I argued: But while the lives of Palestinian Christians in Gaza and the West Bank are surrounded by politics, the sacredness of their communities is far greater than any partisan political concern. Tweet This

As a Christian, I won’t shy from professing my own understanding of the significance of the ancient Christian community there in the West Bank—the community in which Christ was born.

Families like the ones Alice fights for in the West Bank descend directly from those who were in the upper room when the Holy Spirit first knit the Church together. And it was that Church which, through centuries of courageous and costly preaching about the dignity of every human being as made in the image and likeness of God, gave us the world we have today.

It was this ancient Christian community’s world-reforming ethic of radical solidarity between all peoples that would give rise to Christendom, and then to the humanizing political principles by which we would govern ourselves.

The Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States, the abolition of slavery in Europe and then the United States, the United Nations Charter of Human Rights—all of these stem from God’s presentation of Himself as our fellow man in the arms of His Mother in Bethlehem.

I pray that Christians in America will follow Pope Leo’s lead and also come to a deep understanding that when he stands up for Palestinian Christian communities, he is ultimately standing up for us in the West. And I pray that we join him in the fight, knowing that the fight for the East is, in fact, a battle for the heart of the West.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, including Christians and mostly civilian women and children, have already died. Survivors are now starving behind an Israeli blockade against humanitarian aid. Both Pope Leo and President Donald Trump are pressing for an immediate ceasefire and for the corridors for aid to be opened. And my organization, the Vulnerable People Project, stands ready to send in trucks full of supplies, including diapers for babies born in the midst of unspeakable violence. 

One of our trucks will be sent in honor of Pope Francis, who advocated for the Church in Gaza with his last breaths. Another is in honor of Pope Leo XIV. And a third will be sent in honor of Trump for telling Netanyahu to his face that he must relent and allow us to feed these innocents.

“Rising up from this horror,” Pope Leo said in his address this week, 

from the slaughter of so many young people, which ought to provoke outrage because lives are being sacrificed in the name of military conquest, there resounds an appeal: the appeal not so much of the Pope, but of Christ himself, who repeats: “Peace be with you!”

The Holy Father added:

For my part, I will make every effort so that this peace may prevail. The Holy See is always ready to help bring enemies together, face to face, to talk to one another, so that peoples everywhere may once more find hope and recover the dignity they deserve, the dignity of peace. The peoples of our world desire peace, and to their leaders I appeal with all my heart: Let us meet, let us talk, let us negotiate! War is never inevitable. Weapons can and must be silenced, for they do not resolve problems but only increase them. Those who make history are the peacemakers, not those who sow seeds of suffering…

The Church will never tire of repeating: let weapons be silenced.