Catholic leaders welcome Gaza ceasefire and renewed Holy Land pilgrimages

The Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center. / Credit: Father David Steffy

CNA Staff, Jan 18, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Catholic leaders in the Holy Land expressed cautious optimism this week that pilgrims will be able to return to the region amid a new ceasefire and hostage release agreement in Gaza, which is expected to go into effect on Sunday.

While welcoming the ceasefire as a crucial step to end violence and address urgent humanitarian needs, the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land (ACOHL), which includes bishops, exarchs, and eparchs from across the region, emphasized in a Jan. 16 statement that lasting peace requires addressing the root causes of the conflict.

“Genuine and lasting peace can only be achieved through a just solution that addresses the origin of this long-standing struggle. This requires a long process, a willingness to acknowledge each other’s suffering, and a focused education in trust that leads to overcoming fear of the other and the justification of violence as a political tool,” the Catholic leaders wrote.

The leaders said they “eagerly await” the return of pilgrims to the holy places in the Holy Land. Visitation to the Holy Land by foreign pilgrims, a vital part of the livelihoods of many of the region’s Christians, dropped sharply following the October 2023 start of the war.

“The holy places are meant to be places of prayer and peace, and we long for the day when pilgrims can visit them again in safety and spiritual joy,” the ordinaries said.

Several of the most significant sacred sites in the Holy Land, including the churches of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the Nativity in Bethlehem, have been designated as pilgrimage sites for the Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, raising hopes that pilgrims may flock to them once again after more than a year of greatly diminished crowds.

“Despite the pain we have suffered, we continue to look to the future with unwavering hope. May this ceasefire inspire new efforts for dialogue, mutual understanding, and lasting peace for all. At the beginning of the jubilee year dedicated to hope that does not disappoint, we read in this event a sign that reminds us of God’s faithfulness.”

Late Friday, Israel’s full Cabinet approved the ceasefire and hostage release deal, which also includes provisions for a major influx of humanitarian aid and was brokered by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt. Under the first 42-day phase of the deal, Hamas forces are expected to release 33 women, children, elderly, and wounded Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian women and children.

Catholic tour operators eager to return to region

In the United States, Catholic pilgrimage leaders also expressed optimism, saying their partners on the ground in the Holy Land are hopeful that the ceasefire will hold and perhaps even end the war. 

Steve Ray, a Catholic convert and speaker who has visited the Holy Land more than 200 times and runs a pilgrimage service, told CNA that the service is planning its next Holy Land pilgrimage for March and hopes to have “time to get the message out” to prospective pilgrims.

Ray said many Christians on the ground in the Holy Land that he has heard from are optimistic about the ceasefire and eager to rebuild their livelihoods through a rebounding of visitation to the region.

However, Ray said the perception of continued danger is still keeping Americans away from Holy Land pilgrimages, despite what Ray described as a relatively safe security situation in Israel for tourists, even amid the fighting in Gaza. Ray said he hopes the ceasefire will hold and that prospective pilgrims will be inspired to give the Holy Land another look.

“People are going to want to wait and watch for a while,” he said. “Americans are going to want to know it’s safe.”

Milanka Lachman, founder of Tennessee-based 206 Tours, told CNA that she, too, perceives optimism from her partners in the Holy Land about the staying power of the current ceasefire.

206 Tours operates Catholic pilgrimages in 33 countries, with the Holy Land as its No. 1 destination, sending approximately 100 groups per year, Lachman said, but the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the current conflicts has “really crushed our partners and guides in the Holy Land.”

That said, “I believe that this is it … I believe that the war is over,” Lachman told CNA by email.

“Our plan now is to let several thousand pilgrims whose scheduled pilgrimages were affected over the past years as well as our priests and group leaders know that we plan to resume this summer with our regularly scheduled departures … and that we will take any group requests from November 2025 on,” she said.

While noting that she cannot guarantee anyone’s safety in the Holy Land — no one can — Lachman encouraged Catholics in the U.S. to consider a trip, in part as a way of supporting the region’s Christians.

“Let’s go back to the Holy Land, and God please make the Israel-Hamas peace deal last,” she concluded.

Father David Steffy, LC, an American priest who directs the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center, a famous refuge for pilgrims to the Holy Land, told CNA he is hopeful that the ceasefire “will encourage tour agencies to start organizing trips again.”

While usually welcoming large numbers of American pilgrims, Steffy said lately the center has had only a few pilgrim groups visiting, mainly from the Philippines, Korea, and other Far East countries. They recently welcomed a group of about 30 Americans, the largest such group in “the last several months.” Many major U.S. airlines still are not flying to the Holy Land, he noted.

He reiterated, as he did when speaking to CNA in October 2023, that the dearth of pilgrims has caused great suffering for the Christian community who work in the tourism industry, including employees of the Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center.

“The strain on families and the local economy has been devastating, especially for the local Christian community,” Steffy told CNA.

“We are encouraging pilgrim groups to return and His Beatitude Cardinal [Pierbattista] Pizzaballa [the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem] often speaks about the role pilgrims play in helping the Holy Land recover and heal from the consequences of the war and hostilities of the past year. We expect that by September perhaps visiting groups of pilgrims will be about 60% of what would be normal.”

Terra Dei, a pilgrimage tour operator with 14 employees in the Holy Land since 2013, saw a precipitous drop in visitation after the start of the Gaza conflict, with at least 75 pilgrim groups canceling their reservations after October 2023 and 70 groups canceling for 2024.

José Manuel Gude, a business developer for Terra Dei based in Jerusalem, told CNA by email that the group has already received messages from “previous customers or from people willing to come” on pilgrimage about how the ceasefire might change the security situation. Similar to Ray, he said Israel itself, and the holy sites, were very secure even before the ceasefire, but foreign pilgrims — especially Catholics, he says — remain wary.

“Most [people] have the idea that a pilgrimage to the Holy Land now is dangerous and will not come until a ceasefire is signed,” Gude said.

“It is understandable because what they see in the news are images of the war and it may seem that the whole country is a battlefield, when in reality life in Israel goes on totally normal.”

Gude echoed Lachman by saying he hopes Catholics will view a Holy Land pilgrimage with a “sense of mission,” as a way of supporting the Christians in the region who depend so highly on pilgrim groups. 

“[It] is precisely now when their presence is [most] needed among the local Christian community, which takes care of the holy sites and employs in the religious tourism sector an important proportion of its population, especially in Bethlehem,” he said.