News

Catholic Priest Attacked in Bethlehem after Giving Refuge to Tourists

June 30, 2018

Bethlehem is, of course, the site of the Church of the Nativity, built on the place where our Lord Jesus Christ was born. It is also home to the Greek Orthodox Church of Shepherd’s Field, identified as the scene where the Angel of the Lord visited the shepherds and informed them of Christ’s birth. One of the underground caves is a church functioning first as a shelter, then as a tomb of the shepherds, and has been treated as such by Christians since the fourth century. Bethlehem is also the site of the Holy Cross Monastery, located upon the site where the wood was taken from the tree that was used for the Holy Cross.

It is a source of sorrow to see this Catholic priest attacked in this venerable Christian city, apparently only for protecting women who were being harassed by the attackers.

“Catholic Priest Attacked in Bethlehem after Giving Refuge to Tourists,” Morning Star News, June 4, 2018:

(Morning Star News) – An unidentified man in Bethlehem lunged at a Catholic priest with what appears to be a knife on Friday (June 1) in a rare attack on a clergyman in the Palestinian Territories.

At Bethlehem’s Milk Grotto, the Rev. Fadi Shallufi on Friday afternoon opened the chapel gates to foreign tourists, including women who were being harassed by two men, according to Arabic press reports. Chapel security footage shows the Franciscan friar exchanging words with the two men through the bars of the closed gates….

Read more here.

Photo by Ralf Roletschek – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48183577