As the year 2024 draws to a close, we close with it the 75th anniversary commemorations of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine, CNEWA’s operating agency in the Middle East.
While commemorating this 75th anniversary is in many ways a sad occasion — we are remembering generations of lives, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, marked by turmoil, war, oppression, homelessness, broken hearts — we are recalling 75 years of love and concern on an international scale for the lives of men, women and children, who through no fault of their own find themselves at the mercy of others and we remember the global Catholic community’s concern for generations of displaced persons and refugees.
What is the Pontifical Mission for Palestine? Let me explain.
One of the fruits born from the horrors and devastation of World War II was a commitment among the family of nations to ensure the world would avoid global war and work together to solve regional disputes — before those disputes became armed conflicts. The United Nations was erected as an international body to become a place of dialogue and advocacy. Among the U.N.’s first interventions involved the European occupation of territory in the Middle East, with a special focus on British-mandated Palestine, which in November 1947 its members voted to partition into two independent states, one Arab and the other, Jewish. The plan also called for an international body to govern the holy city of Jerusalem. Clashes between Arab and Jewish inhabitants, however, broke out soon after the vote. The violence escalated when the British withdrew their troops in May 1948, Israel immediately proclaimed its independence and the new state’s Arab neighbors declared war, all provoking a massive refugee crisis.
Overnight, nearly a million Palestinian Arabs, Christian and Muslim, fled their homes and ancestral villages, finding refuge in neighboring Lebanon, the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, Gaza (then occupied by Egypt) and Syria. In his 1948 encyclical letter, In multiplicibus curis, Pope Pius XII noted that “in the land in which our Lord Jesus Christ shed his blood …the blood of man continues to flow … men continue to fight and to increase the distress of the unfortunate and the fear of the terrorized, while thousands of refugees, homeless and driven, wander from their fatherland in search of shelter and food.”
One New York priest, Msgr. Thomas J. McMahon, in his capacity as head of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), led relief efforts among the dispossessed on behalf of the United States Catholic bishops. He noted later that in those months “at the close of 1948 and the beginning of 1949, as I helped the bishops and a thousand priests and sisters for the relief of the Middle East, I could see the absolute need for a special Pontifical Mission for Palestine, coordinating the efforts of the whole Catholic world … . This had been the idea of the Holy Father and all those around him.”
One man close to the pope at that time was Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, who organized and directed the pontiff’s humanitarian refugee relief efforts during the war. Montini, who later became pope and assumed the name Paul, kept abreast of Msgr. McMahon’s relief activities and suggested that he should lead such a task force.
“It has been decided,” wrote Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, secretary of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches, “to bring together under the Pontifical Mission, operating in the Holy Land, all those organizations and associations which are engaged in activities concerning the East, and which are scattered throughout many countries of Europe and other continents.”
Charged by the Holy See, CNEWA’s Msgr. McMahon immediately began working with the emergency relief fund of the U.S. Catholic bishops, the U.S. National Catholic Welfare Conference, the U.S. National Council of Catholic Women, the Catholic Medical Mission Board, the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Much of the hands-on-work funded and supported by this initiative was carried out by the religious communities of men and women in the Holy Land, and an army of lay volunteers.
Nine years after the pope launched this special effort for the displaced of Palestine, entrusting its administration to CNEWA, Msgr. Peter P. Tuohy, who succeeded Msgr. McMahon as president of the Pontifical Mission, noted that the Pontifical Mission had distributed more than $34 million in food, medicines and clothing, including 8,000 tons of food, 6,000 tons of clothing and 55 tons of medical supplies. These life-saving supplies were distributed from 273 centers to more than 425,000 people, nearly half of the refugee population. The priest also reported that CNEWA-Pontifical Mission in this same period sheltered some 20,000 refugees and supported the education of more than 34,000 students in 343 schools.
“Your name,” wrote Cardinal Tisserant to the retired Msgr. McMahon, “is held in grateful memory by thousands of refugees from Palestine, who without your timely and effective intervention would have been lost.”
As the years progressed, and with no resolution in sight, the refugees of Palestine had few options. Many remained in the camps that offered them immediate shelter. Others left and either assimilated into the local population or emigrated. Many Christian Palestinians, who once formed 20 percent of the population and the backbone of Palestinian culture and the middle classes, began to leave for the Americas or Oceania. Either way, the rupture among communities, cultures and families weighed heavily on the local churches, and the Holy See, which saw threats to the dignity of human life.
Upon his election as pontiff, Pope Paul VI announced his intention to begin his pontificate in the Holy Land, to “bring to the Holy Sepulchre and to the Grotto of the Nativity the desires of individuals, of families, of nations; above all, the aspirations, the anxieties, the sufferings of the sick, the poor, the disinherited, the afflicted, the refugees, of those who suffer, those who weep, those who hunger and thirst for justice.”
The pope was accompanied on his pilgrimage in January 1964 by the head of CNEWA-Pontifical Mission, Msgr. Joseph Ryan. The pope’s visit offered many highlights, notably the embrace of the bishops of Rome and New Rome — Constantinople — and the beginning of the thaw in Catholic and Orthodox Christian relationships. But he also founded four initiatives, enlisting CNEWA-Pontifical Mission for its support and counsel, that have changed the course of thousands of lives until today: Bethlehem University, the Ephpheta Institute for Hearing Impaired Children, Tantur Ecumenical Institute and the Notre Dame Pilgrimage Center in Jerusalem. These human development initiatives of the Holy See changed the course of the direction of the Pontifical Mission, from one of emergency relief to one that also offered human development, body and soul once the immediate needs were met.
The lack of political resolutions, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, civil war in Jordan and Lebanon, the beginning of the first intifada in 1987 and the 1991 Gulf War prompted CNEWA-Pontifical Mission to respond to new needs brought about by military oppression, civil strife and war, prompting Paul VI’s successors, especially Pope John Paul II, to extend the mandate of the Pontifical Mission for the needs of all vulnerable persons throughout the Middle East.
Today, CNEWA directs the Pontifical Mission’s activities throughout the region. Its regional team based in Amman, Jordan, serves Iraq and Jordan. Our Beirut team, who also function as our emergency response coordinators, provide support throughout Lebanon and Syria. And our Jerusalem-based team offers support in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank.
Although huge unknowns continue to plague the people living throughout Israel and Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, Jordan and Iraq, CNEWA-Pontifical Mission remains steadfast in its commitment of service as the Holy Father’s own instrument of healing and hope.