A nativity scene carved out of olive wood by the Zakharia Brothers workshop in Bethlehem. / Zakharia Brothers. See CNA article for full slideshow.
Bethlehem, West Bank, Dec 28, 2022 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Around the corner from the spot where Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a Catholic family runs a small workshop carving Nativity scenes out of olive wood.
The Zakharia Brothers woodworking factory has made handcarved Nativity scenes for popes, prime ministers, and presidents.
Alber Zakharia standing outside his family’s workshop in Bethlehem. Courtney Mares / CNA
Alber Zakharia’s corner office is decorated with photos of famous figures holding his family’s wooden statues, from Pope Benedict XVI to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
President Joe Biden also received one of their Nativity scenes from the mayor of Bethlehem during his visit to Palestine earlier this year.
But Zakharia is even more proud to show off the manger scenes that were handcarved by his late father and grandfather for the business that has been in his family for generations
Nativity figurines carved by Alber Zakharia’s late father (left) and grandfather (right) in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Courtney Mares
He told CNA that his family arrived in the West Bank town of Bethlehem as refugees from the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
As Latin Catholics, the Zakharia family are part of a shrinking Christian community in the city of Jesus’ birth.
Inside the Zakharia Brothers’ workshop in Bethlehem. Courtney Mares / CNA
Christians declined from 84% of Bethlehem’s population in 1922 to 25% in 2007, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. A 2017 Palestinian Authority survey found that Christians make up just 1% of the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a total population of 46,850.
Inside the Zakharia Brothers’ workshop in Bethlehem. Courtney Mares / CNA
Inside the workshop, woodworkers labor throughout the year carving Nativity scenes under the gaze of an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child.
The Zakharia Brothers workshop has also created statues of St. Michael the Archangel, the Last Supper, and Noah’s Ark.
A wooden statue carved by the Zakharia Brothers workshop in Bethlehem. Courtney Mares / CNA
Like many businesses in Bethlehem, the Zakharia Brothers workshop suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic from closures and the total loss of tourism.
As pilgrimages to the Holy Land have finally resumed, local Christian leaders have expressed hope that visitors will support the Christian presence in the region.
A depiction of the Holy Family on the front of a Catholic church in Bethlehem. Courtney Mares
“We are thankful that Christians around the world are now returning on pilgrimage to the Holy Land in increasingly greater numbers,” Latin Catholic Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa and other Christians leaders wrote in their 2022 Christmas message.
“We encourage them to not only reverently visit the blessed stones of the holy sites but also to engage and support the ‘living stones’ of the local Christian presence, whose families have helped build and tend those venerable sites across the centuries, down to the present day.”
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Pope Francis prays before the crowned image of Mary, Undoer of Knots, in the Vatican Gardens, May 31, 2021. / Screenshot from Vatican News YouTube channel.
Vatican City, May 31, 2021 / 11:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis asked on Monday for the interce… […]
Bishops process into St. Peter’s Basilica for the closing Mass of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 29, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The guiding document for the final part of the Synod on Synodality, published Tuesday, focuses on how to implement certain of the synod’s aims, while laying aside some of the more controversial topics from last year’s gathering, like women’s admission to the diaconate.
“Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working tool,” says.
The six sections of the roughly 30-page document will be the subject of prayer, conversation, and discernment by participants in the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held throughout the month of October in Rome.
Instead of focusing on questions and “convergences,” as in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, “it is now necessary that … a consensus can be reached,” said a FAQ page from synod organizers, also released July 9, answering a question about why the structure was different from last year’s Instrumentum Laboris.
The guiding document for the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 covered such hot-button topics as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach.
By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects, while offering concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils.
“It is difficult to imagine a more effective way to promote a synodal Church than the participation of all in decision-making and taking processes,” it states.
The working tool also refers to the 10 study groups formed late last year to tackle different themes deemed “matters of great relevance” by the Synod’s first session in October 2023. These groups will continue to meet through June 2025 but will provide an update on their progress at the second session in October.
The possibility of the admission of women to the diaconate will not be a topic during the upcoming assembly, the Instrumentum Laboris said.
The new document was presented at a July 9 press conference by Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, together with the special secretaries of the synodal assembly: Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa and Father Riccardo Battocchio.
“The Synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said, pointing to testimonies shared in the most recent reports sent by bishops’ conferences.
The Oct. 2-27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will use the Instrumentum Laboris as a guide for their “conversations in the Spirit,” the method of discussion introduced at the 2023 assembly. They will also prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
Prominent topics
The 2024 Instrumentum Laboris also addresses the need for transparency to restore the Church’s credibility in the face of sexual abuse of adults and minors and financial scandals.
“If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming,” the document reads, “then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority.”
It recommends effective lay involvement in pastoral and economic planning, the publication of annual financial statements certified by external auditors, annual summaries of safeguarding initiatives, the promotion of women to positions of authority, and periodic performance evaluations on those exercising a ministry or holding a position in the Church.
“These are points of great importance and urgency for the credibility of the synodal process and its implementation,” the document says.
The greater participation of women in all levels of the Church, a reform of the education of priests, and greater formation for all Catholics are also included in the text.
Bishops’ conferences, it says, noticed an untapped potential for women’s participation in many areas of Church life. “They also call for further exploration of ministerial and pastoral modalities that better express the charisms and gifts the Spirit pours out on women in response to the pastoral needs of our time,” the document states.
Formation in listening is identified as “an essential initial requirement” for Catholics, as well as how to engage in the practice of “conversation in the Spirit,” which was employed in the first session of the Synod on Synodality.
Pope Francis and delegates at the Synod on Synodality at the conclusion of the assembly on Oct. 28, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
The document says the need for formation has been one of the most universal and strong themes throughout the synodal process. Interreligious dialogue also is identified as an important aspect of the synodal journey.
On the topic of the liturgy, the Instrumentum Laboris says there was “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
“It is necessary that the pastoral proposals and liturgical practices preserve and make ever more evident the link between the journey of Christian initiation and the synodal and missionary life of the Church,” the document says. “The appropriate pastoral and liturgical arrangements must be developed in the plurality of situations and cultures in which the local Churches are immersed …”
How it was drafted
Dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2,” the document released Tuesday has been in preparation since early June when approximately 20 experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law held a closed-door meeting to analyze around 200 synod reports from bishops’ conferences and religious communities responding to what the Instrumentum Laboris called “the guiding question” of the next stage of the Synod on Synodality: “How to be a synodal Church in mission?”
After the 10-day gathering, “an initial version” of the text was drafted based on those reports and sent to around 70 people — priests, religious, and laypeople — “from all over the world, of various ecclesial sensitivities and from different theological ‘schools,’” for consultation, according to the synod website.
The XVI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, together with consultants of the synod secretariat, finalized the document.
According to the working tool, soliciting new reports and feedback after the consultation phase ended is “consistent with the circularity characterizing the whole synodal process.”
“In preparation for the Second Session, and during its work, we continue to address this question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” it says.
The document says “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the ten Study Groups.”
Expectations for final session
According to the guiding document, the second session of the Synod on Synodality can “expect a further deepening of the shared understanding of synodality, a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law (there may be yet more significant and profound developments as the basic proposal is further assimilated and lived.)”
“Nonetheless,” it continues, “we cannot expect the answer to every question. In addition, other proposals will emerge along the way, on the path of conversion and reform that the Second Session will invite the whole Church to undertake.”
The Instrumentum Laboris says, “Synodality is not an end in itself … If the Second Session is to focus on certain aspects of synodal life, it does so with a view to greater effectiveness in mission.”
In its brief conclusion, the text states: “The questions that the Instrumentum Laboris asks are: how to be a synodal Church in mission; how to engage in deep listening and dialogue; how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation; how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; how to exercise power and authority as service. Each of these questions is a service to the Church and, through its action, to the possibility of healing the deepest wounds of our time.”
Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Apr 9, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed men burst into a church meeting room in the North Kivu region April 8 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and killed 38-year-old Fr. Étienne Sengiyumva, the parish pastor.
Bishop Théophile Kaboy Ruboneka of Goma, in North Kivu Province announced the news to the Vatican’s Fides News Agency
“After celebrating the Mass at Kyahemba, a district in his parish, around 3pm, Fr. Étienne was meeting with his parish staff, when an armed man, accompanied by others, entered the meeting room and shot the priest point blank in the head, killing him instantly, ” the bishop recounted.
“The murder happened so quickly that those present couldn’t take note of how many people had entered the room to kill Fr. Étienne,” he lamented.
The bishop also told Fides that ”it’s hard to know who is responsible. Our region is infested with armed groups, at least 15, that fail to be dismantled despite the constant presence of the army and the blue-helmeted UN soldiers.”
Bishop Ruboneka explained that “Fr. Étienne is the third priest killed in the region” and that “the investigations to find those responsible for these deaths go nowhere. On our part, we are doing everything we can to identify Fr. Étienne’s killers, even though we have no illusions.”
“In these cases the witnesses fear for their own lives and the lives of their loved ones and it would be hard for them to offer any information useful for the investigation,” he pointed out.
The bishop also stated that Fr. Célestin Ngango was kidnapped from the diocese after celebrating Easter Mass. He was later released, blindfolded, at around 3 am following heavy pressure from the local inhabitants. The Congolese bishops’ conference told Fides “the freed priest was not mistreated and he appears to be in good health. However, he will undergo a medical examination.”
Bishop Ruboneka does not think there is any connection between the two incidents.
“I repeat, in our region there are so many armed groups that it is hard to know who committed this act or another. Here in North Kivu we are living in total chaos,” Bishop Ruboneka said.
In conclusion the prelate stressed that “the situation of the Diocese of Goma, as well as Butembo-Beni, is unbelievable. We are completely abandoned by everyone and we live thanks to the grace of Providence. I ask the faithful of the Universal Church to pray for our region so we can again find peace.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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