VATICAN (CNS): “With tears in our eyes, let us raise our prayer for peace,” Pope Francis said as he thanked the people of Bethlehem and Palestinian authorities for the Nativity scene that decorates the Vatican Paul VI Audience Hall.
A Christmas creche conveys the “message of peace and love that Jesus left us,” the pope said during a December 7 meeting with the artisans, volunteers and government representatives responsible for the Christmas decorations in the audience hall and in St. Peter’s Square.
He asked them all to remember the people in the Holy Land and in other parts of the world who are “suffering from the tragedy of war.”
Pope Francis said, “Enough war, enough violence. Do you know that one of the most profitable investments here is in arms production? Profit for killing—But why? Enough wars! May there be peace in all the world and for all people, whom God loves.”
In the creche in the audience hall the olive-wood baby Jesus was lying on a white and black kaffiyeh, a Palestinian headdress. Some commentators remarked that the choice seemed to imply that Jesus was born a Palestinian rather than a Jew. The Times of Israel called it “provocative.”
In a tweet describing the Nativity scene, the American Jewish Committee wrote, “We are disappointed and troubled that a meaningful religious tradition has been politicised in this way.”
When the pope stopped to pray before the Bethlehem creche at the end of his general audience on December 11, the baby Jesus statue and kaffiyeh-draped manger were gone. The Vatican press office reminded that, traditionally the baby Jesus, is not placed in a Nativity scene until Christmas Eve.
In the meantime Pope Francis met with Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, on December 12. The two last met in 2021 at the Vatican.
The two spoke privately for 30 minutes before Abbas introduced his delegation and exchanged gifts with Pope Francis.
Enough war, enough violence. Do you know that one of the most profitable investments here is in arms production? Profit for killing—But why? Enough wars! May there be peace in all the world and for all people, whom God loves
The pope gave the Palestinian leader a plaque of a bloom sprouting through a crack in the pavement with the inscription, “Peace is a fragile flower”, in Italian.
Abbas gave the pope two paintings: one of the two of them together and the other, based on a well-known photo, shows Pope Francis praying for peace in front of the Israeli security wall in Bethlehem during his visit in 2014.
The Palestinian president also brought the pope a gift from Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem: an icon of St. Porphyrius, a fourth-century bishop of Gaza.
The Vatican press office said that the two agreed that “Jerusalem, protected by a special status, can be a place of encounter and friendship between the three great monotheistic religions,” Judaism, Christian and Islam. It said, “the hope was expressed that the Jubilee of 2025 may lead to the return of pilgrims in the Holy Land, which longs so much for peace.”
The Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square for 2024 came from Grado, Italy, an island surrounded by a lagoon dotted with other tiny islands where the people have “casoni” or mud and thatch huts; traditionally people out fishing would stop to rest and fix lunch in the huts.
The Church is the boat. One does not reach Jesus alone—never—we reach him together, we reach him as a community, on that great little boat that Peter continues to lead and on which, huddling together a little, there is room for everyone
The townspeople, with 40 volunteer artists and craftspeople, recreated a casone for the Holy Family in St. Peter’s Square. And the three Magi journey toward the baby Jesus in a flat-bottomed boat piloted by an old fisherwoman.
Pope Francis noted that “a ‘batela,’ the typical flat-bottomed boat” is needed to cross the water.
Today, too, “a boat is needed to reach Jesus,” he said. “The Church is the boat. One does not reach Jesus alone—never—we reach him together, we reach him as a community, on that great little boat that Peter continues to lead and on which, huddling together a little, there is room for everyone.”
Pope Francis insisted that “in the Church, there is always room for everyone. One might ask, ‘But what about sinners?’ They are the first, they are the privileged, because Jesus came for the sinners, for all of us, not for the saints. For everyone. Do not forget this. Everyone, everyone, everyone, everyone inside.”
Antonio Boemo, the designer of the Nativity scene in the square, told reporters the scene is composed of 102 pieces of recycled material which will be dismantled and taken back to Grado after Christmas.
He also noted that Mary is holding a lily in her lap. On Christmas Eve, the lily will be replaced with a statue of the baby Jesus.
Pope Francis, at the morning audience, and officials from the small mountain town of Ledro in northern Italy, speaking in the evening, insisted the red pine Christmas tree the town sent to the Vatican was cut down as part of an ecologically sound forest management project.
Pope Francis said the old tree giving its life to provide the space and light the younger trees need to grow “can be a beautiful image of the Church,” which spreads the light of Christ “precisely due to the succession of generations of believers who gather around the single origin, Jesus: the old gave life to the young, the young embrace and protect the old, in a mission in the world and on a journey toward Heaven.”
