Cardinal Gugerotti: Give to avoid being complicit with those who set world ablaze

By Stefano Leszczynski

As every year, on Good Friday there will be a collection of offerings destined for the Holy Land—an important initiative of solidarity by the universal Church in support of the Churches and Christian communities of the Holy Land.

This year, the collection takes place in a context of war that seems to be spreading quickly, generating dramatic consequences for everyone in the region.

In a letter addressed to the entire Catholic Church to encourage contributions to the traditional Collecta pro Terra Sancta (Good Friday Collection), Cardinal Claudio Gugerotti, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, denounced the unceasing roar of weapons and invited everyone to reflect, so as not to become complicit with those who are setting the world on fire.

“I have the impression that most of the world does not realize the catastrophe that is striking our civilization. Those who promote war today are destroying everything that has been built since the Second World War,” the cardinal stressed, “I am not speaking only of ideals, but also of people and things—even historical monuments of immense value.”

This interview has been edited for clarity.

In this context, how should people understand the Collection for the Holy Land?

It is an assumption of responsibility toward our brothers and sisters who continue to die, struck by the senseless violence sweeping the world, and who have nothing to eat and nothing with which to care for themselves. We must take on their suffering, because they are not “other than us”—they are our very flesh.

Your Eminence, what does the war we are witnessing mean for the Christian communities of the Holy Land?

Christian communities, which have always had the sense of being merely tolerated, now fear that they may no longer be tolerated at all. As a result, they want to flee.

Take what has happened in Syria, for example: in just a few years, we have lost 80% of Christians. This means that the Holy Land—the land where Jesus was born, where early Christianity developed, where the first liturgies were formed, where the first Fathers of the Church spoke to the world and enriched doctrine, where the Councils took place—is in danger of being emptied of the living Christian presence embodied by real men and women, which is an essential part of its identity.

As a Church, we cannot resign ourselves to this, nor can we abandon these communities—who are part of us—to such a fate. Moreover, this discrimination does not affect only them, but all “minorities,” which sooner or later are or will be threatened in the same way.

We are speaking of very ancient communities, with a clear and steadfast Christian faith, a strong spirit of solidarity, and a deep attachment to the Church, which has been a mother to all: caring for their children, finding housing so they could endure, supporting their small businesses, and above all keeping alive their faith and their sense of purpose. Where will they go? Who will welcome them? Who will preserve their identity, without which the Church itself would be deeply wounded?

Normally, the proceeds of the collection are used for development projects, micro-enterprises, reconstruction, and the restoration of holy places. What are the priorities today?

Today, we are talking about survival.

Whenever even a small opening appears that allows us to be present, we do everything we can to save lives, even though our efforts are often thwarted. We are not speaking only of the Holy Land in the strict sense. The war is spreading in a frightening way, and no one seems to consider what all this implies politically, as well as humanly and religiously.

Can anyone explain what the meaning of all this is? What does it mean to once again propose the crude categories of “good people” and “bad people”? Our first task now is to help not only Christians, but all those in similar conditions, to survive and to defend their rights.

Among the main areas of focus are education and youth formation…

We are considering proposing to the Holy Father that part of the collection be allocated to paying school fees for Christian children attending our schools in the countries of the Holy Land and the Middle East.

These are poor families who go so far as to mortgage their homes in order to educate their children and ensure that their cultural heritage is not lost. Helping Christian families in this way also means helping them to remain and to guarantee a future for their children in their own lands. People have always been generous in contributing to the Holy Land Collection, and knowing that their donations also enable children to return to school is certainly a strong encouragement to that generosity.

There seems to be declining public awareness to what is happening internationally. What message would you give to awaken compassion in society?

Abstract theorizing is useless. We must look at the concrete details to understand whether this is the world we want. From a Christian perspective, we are working to build a society that is the opposite of what the Gospel teaches.

In the minds of many, unfortunately, God has been replaced by money—and this kind of idol demands human sacrifices. Too many people, even among those who call themselves Christians, now see their only goal as financial success, which in reality benefits very few while bringing misery to entire peoples. The Lord said it clearly: “You cannot serve both God and money.”

Let us ask ourselves, then, how we would react if one day our own children were taken and sent to war. Let us ask why our young people feel so lost, and why they are increasingly tempted by violence or self-destruction.

In this sense, the Holy Land Collection represents a significant form—among many others—of mobilization to say: there are people who are suffering because of what is happening in the places where Jesus Christ is felt, where the very air carries what He breathed and what He infused into it. Let us not allow the sacramental nature of those places and those peoples to be erased. It is a symbol for the entire world.