We all know (or we should, anyway) about the precarious state of the shrinking Christian presence in the Holy Land. Today, Sandro Magister reports on what the representative of the Franciscan Custodians of the Holy Land have to say these days

"What do you mean by difficulties between Israel and the Vatican? We Christians in the Holy Land have other problems. Almost every day – I repeat, almost every day – our communities are harassed by the Islamic extremists in these regions. And if it’s not the members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, there are clashes with the ‘rubber wall’ of the Palestinian Authority, which does little or nothing to punish those responsible. On occasion, we have even discovered among our attackers the police agents of Mahmoud Abbas or the militants of Fatah, his political party, who are supposed to be defending us."

Fr. Pizzaballa is an authority. He represents the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, the institution to which the Holy See has for seven centuries entrusted the care of Church property in the land where Jesus lived.

He speaks Hebrew and understands Arabic. And he told the "Corriere" that he has "a list of 93 cases of injustice of various kinds committed against Christians in the region of Bethlehem between 2000 and 2004."