The Catholic Church has all the time been conducting numerous services worldwide through its various charity organizations that disseminate a message of love, peace, and harmony. Yet, among the most outstanding pinnacles of services is the alleviation of the suffering of people by introducing measures designed to raise the standard of education or rather create atmospheres conducive to uplifting education in countries where the educational institutions collapse or become incapacitated due to certain innate conditions.
Education has always been a bulwark against poverty, backwardness, and disease among other things. An educated nation is productive, successful, self-reliant and self-sufficient.
With reports indicating that schools in the Gaza Strip have been rendered inexistent due to the prevailing fierce fighting that has been engulfing the strip since October 7, 2023, the Catholic Church in the strip has made all necessary steps designed to restore education to the news generations, at a possible minimum level, in order to help eliminate the gap of illiteracy or rather help create a generation armed with knowledge and able to face the various vicissitudes of life.
Press reports indicate that about 150 children and teenagers aged 4 to 17, who took shelter in the Latin Parish of the Holy Family in Gaza City, took up their books and notebooks again in June 2024 for the first time since the start of the war last October, with thanks extended to the efforts spearheaded by parish priest Fr. Gabriel Romanelli.
The Saint Joseph project launched
Having returned to Gaza in mid-May 2024--after being stuck in Jerusalem for the first seven months of the conflict in Gaza--Fr. Romanelli wasted no time, whereby within a few weeks he launched the St. Joseph Project to help children reconnect with their studies after missing an entire year of school due to the ongoing conflict.
“I had been thinking about it since the war broke out, and when I returned, I saw that there was a great need for it. It is good for children and teenagers to use their time well. Leaving them without study, without structure, leaves them at the mercy of what happens around them,” he said.
Actually, what has been launched is not a typical school, with no formal curricula to follow. The idea is rather to help the young people channel their physical and mental energy into something constructive and to be ready for when school resumes.
“Because this war will end one day, and we will be ready to start again,” Fr. Romanelli said with conviction. "Engaging in studies helps to avoid thinking and talking only about the war, not to focus solely on the conflict. It is a small seed of hope,” he said.
“The project,” Fr. Romanelli explained, “is dedicated to St. Joseph because it is thanks to him that the Holy Family found salvation in Egypt, passing through here, and later returned to Nazareth. We ask him to protect our children and help them grow.”
The chapel, the kitchen, the living room, and the balcony of the Sisters of the Incarnate Word’s house have all become “classrooms.” They were open-sided, but we closed them to help the children avoid distractions, as there are always people around,” Romanelli said.
While it may seem peculiar to talk about education and studying when missiles and bombs continue to rain down around, Romanelli argued that there is nothing more right to do.
On the other hand, Fr. Romanelli said, “Education is nourishment for the soul; it is essential first and foremost, from a spiritual perspective. If life is not lived in union with God, without the life of grace, people are like walking dead. Without this, humans will never find inner peace. But alongside this, it is important to nourish the intellectual aspect, the thought.”
Romanelli continued: “After eight months without lessons, without reading, what can we talk about? If one does not care for the formative, intellectual aspect, if one does not nourish oneself with good, interesting things that speak of the future, if one does not read and study, the soul withers, and thus life withers.”
Actually, this project offers young people the opportunity to nourish their souls, both intellectually and spiritually as well as to keep them engaged in constructive activities.
What is the impact of "scholasticide" and "educide" on news generations?
"Educide" and "scholasticide" are two words that have been coined to indicate the systematic destruction of an education system and its institutions. This phenomenon has become a reality in Gaza in the wake of the eruption of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Karma Nabulsi, an Oxford University scholar, first coined the term “scholasticide” to describe the willful demolition of educational infrastructure. This term was popularized earlier.
The eruption of the war in Gaza has led to incapacitating the education sector which shoves the new generations into a bleak tunnel that has no end. The destruction of educational institutions raises the question about the prospects of restoring the status quo ante of the educational system. Even when war ends, an expeditious rebuilding of educational institutions is of utmost importance so as to breathe life into the future of the news generations.
At any rate, the Catholic Church’s resuscitation of the educational system in Gaza is a step in the right direction which will hopefully be followed by gargantuan measures leading to placing this sector into a right track.
