Every night without fail, a mobile phone rings at the Holy Family church in Gaza, and a parish priest answers. The voice at the end of the line is that of Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church and spiritual leader of the world’s 1.4 billion people.

For more than a year, the pontiff has made nightly calls to the church to comfort hundreds of Palestinian Christians sheltering there as riots rage in the streets outside and Israeli warplanes pound. most of the town around them to destroy.

For those living in difficult conditions in the church complex and now preparing for their second Christmas surrounded by war, regular contact with the pope reassures them that they have not been forgotten.

“It calms our fears and makes us feel cared for,” said Attallah Tarazi, a retired surgeon. “The Pope gave us his blessings, and he prayed with us when the connection was good.”

The entire Christian community in Gaza — up to 1,000 people — sought sanctuary in October 2023 at the Catholic Holy Family Church complex and the nearby Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, the only two Christian houses of worship in the territory.

The pope said of the conflict in Gaza in his annual Christmas address on Saturday: “Yesterday the children were bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war.” He told CBS Sixty Minutes program in May: “I speak every seven o’clock in the evening to the parish in Gaza . . . They told me what happened there. Very hard, very hard. . . Sometimes they are hungry and they tell me. There is a lot of suffering.”

On December 22, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, led a Christmas mass at the church of the Holy Family in a rare foreign visit allowed by the Israeli authorities in the besieged strip.

Despite the war outside, cassock-clad priests regularly say mass in Gaza’s two churches under domes painted with biblical scenes. Some lessons have also started in church complexes for children who lost their second year of school after the war caused by the attack by Hamas on October 7 2023 in Israel, where the Palestinian militant group killed 1,200 people and seized about 250 hostages.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fierce offensive launched by Israel in the Gaza strip.

The number of Christians sheltering in churches has decreased this year as many have left by crossing the Rafah with Egypt, which was open until Israel seized it on May 6.

That leaves about 650 people in the two churches, said George Akroush, an official at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Families sleep on mattresses and survive on canned food and lentils, without fresh meat, fruit or vegetables. Aid agencies sent supplies, while some humanitarian convoys were organized by the patriarchate.

“We are trying to send warm things because it is very cold in Gaza,” Akroush said. “We want to give them boots and children’s clothes and thermal wear. There was also a severe shortage of mattresses, but the Israelites would not tolerate this, although most people slept on the floor.

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

Akroush said the patriarchate tried to send supplies for between 6,000 and 7,000 people in each of its convoys so that aid could also reach Muslim neighbors. “We make no distinction between Christians and Muslims,” ​​he said. “This is the mission of the church.”

Tarazi refuses to leave Gaza to join his adult children in Australia: he wants to see the outcome of the war and continues to hope that his property in the strip can be passed on to his children. But he never expected to spend another Christmas in the church.

“I don’t think we will be here long, sleeping to the sound of bombing every night,” he said. “Many shells landed near the church.”

Built in the 1960s to accommodate Christian Palestinian refugees who were forced to flee to Gaza when Israel was established in 1948, the Catholic church is named after the passage of the Holy Family through the territory during their flight. of the Bible to Egypt.

Its complex includes a convent, a school and other buildings, one of which houses 73 people with disabilities. Rocket strikes in December 2023 destroyed that building, and its residents moved to another in the compound, where the nuns still take care of them.

Large areas of Gaza City have become littered with debris due to Israeli bombardment, and most residents have fled south at Israel’s behest.

The status of churches as houses of worship and the Pope’s interest in the welfare of imprisoned Christians seem to provide some protection. But still sniper fire, shells and missiles hit both complexes, and people died in the first months of the war.

In December 2023, an elderly woman and her daughter were shot dead by sniper fire while they were walking inside the Holy Family complex. The Latin Patriarchate accused Israeli troops of carrying out the killings, but the Israeli army denied involvement.

Two months ago an Israeli air strike destroyed a building sheltering families in the Saint Porphyrius compound, killing 17 people. Israel promised to investigate, but no results were announced.

Attallah al-Amash, an accountant, lost his seven-month-old daughter, Joelle, and his wife’s parents in the attack. He then transferred his wife and three-year-old son, Ibrahim, to the Catholic church.

“I felt like everything was negative, and there was a heavy feeling from the time we got up to the time we went to bed,” Amash said. “We were waiting for (the war) to end, but it didn’t.”

His little boy was playing with other children in the churchyard, but Amash said he and his wife “didn’t think about anything and didn’t do anything, we just sat there”.

The building in Gaza City where the family lived was destroyed in July. Since then they rarely leave the compound. Amash hopes for a future outside the enclave. “If I find a job abroad, I will go,” he said. “But now we just have to wait for the war to end.”

Samer Tarazi, who was sheltering in Saint Porphyrius, was preparing to leave for Australia when the Rafah crossing was closed. His wife and three children have already traveled, so the family is now separated.

A member of the large Tarazi Christian clan in Gaza, and a cousin of Attallah Tarazi, he left Saint Porphyrius to film for his media service company when he judged it safe.

“Outside there was absolute destruction,” he said. “There is not a single building that is not destroyed, or has windows. I would say 80 percent of the buildings today are uninhabitable.

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

But Arkoush, of the Latin Patriarchate, said it was too early to write the future of the Christian community in Gaza. He expected 150 more people to leave after the war, but said many chose to stay when offered the chance to go when the crossing was open.

“They said: ‘This is the land of our ancestors and we are not a foreign community.’ I hope the numbers will 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