Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga has issued an appeal for an end to hostilities and the lifting of the Gaza blockade. “A permanent ceasefire, is just the first step on the road to a just peace based on inclusive negotiations across the region,” said the President of Caritas Internationalis and coordinator of the Council of Cardinals that is assisting Pope Francis in Church government in a document outlining the situation in Gaza, Vatican Radio reports. The Honduran cardinal is calling for a laying down of arms, recalling that the majority of victims are innocent people.

On his forthcoming trip to the Albanian capital, Tirana, on Sunday 21 September, Pope Francis will meet with State and religious leaders, the local clergy and some children who are being cared for in various charity organisations. The Holy See Press Office has published the full schedule of the Pope’s one-day visit, during which he will give six speeches.

Since early July, almost two million Palestinians in Gaza and people in Israel have been caught up in a devastating war. People have no safe place to hide when the bombs rain down on the densely-populated, small stretch land that is Gaza. They see their children slaughtered, their neighbourhoods razed to the ground and all hopes for a future of peace torn to shreds.

The battlefield is neighbourhoods full of children, women and men. It contains hospitals over-burdened with the injured and dead and schools which are being bombed even if they are meant to offer refuge.

Since the death of his wife in an Israeli missile attack on their house in the Gaza Strip in late July, George Ayyad, 75, has been keeping vigil over his son Jeries, 31.

Jeries Ayyad lay in the intensive care unit of St. Joseph Hospital. Second- and third-degree burns covered 90 per cent of his body. Both legs were amputated, and he had serious brain trauma.

George Ayyad stands by his son, Jeries, of Gaza, in the intensive care unit of St. Joseph Hospital in Jerusalem July 30.

The proclamation of the caliphate by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) provoked enthusiasm in the young generations of jihadists but criticisms from numerous Muslim figures who reacted to the moves of Al-Baghadi with detailed arguments that Oasis analyses.

As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 1,000, violent demonstrations in the West Bank leave dead and wounded, and an entire Christian community is exiled from the Iraqi city of Mosul by Islamic extremists, Christians in the Holy Land find themselves facing harsh realities.

For some Catholics, the church and its tenets serve as an anchor of hope.

At the Church of St. Catherine, adjacent to Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, parishioners spoke of the struggle July 27. That day, parishes throughout the West Bank celebrated special Masses for Gaza, Iraq and Syria.

“We were also asked, as were the residents of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, to evacuate our homes immediately. And like everyone else, we are asking ourselves where we can go. Gaza is small. Everything is close by. There is no safe haven or neutral place that can shelter us. Where do we go?”

THE UK head of a Catholic charity has hit out at the British government for helping “to lay the foundations” for the rise of extremists in Iraq who have flushed out the last remaining Christians from Mosul after 1,600 years.

Neville Kyrke-Smith, National Director, Aid to the Church in Need (UK), said the UK’s response to uprisings in the Middle East “has blown up in our face” and called on the government to help form “an axis of moderation” in the region.

“Things are so desperate, our people are disappearing. We have had people massacred, their heads chopped off. Are we seeing the end of Christianity? We are committed come what may, we will keep going to the end, but it looks as though the end could be very near.

The vicar of the only Anglican church in Iraq has warned that the end was “very near” for Christians in that country. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, and six weeks ago, 35,000 Christians lived there. Today, there are no Christians in Mosul.

“Enough with all these child deaths! It's time to stop!” At his Sunday Angelus, July 27, the Pope sent out an appeal for three crisis-stricken parts of the world: the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. “May God give the people and their leaders the wisdom and strength to carry along the path of peace with determination, resolving all disagreements with the tenacity of dialogue.”