Exhibition sponsored by the Custody of the Holy Land and the Meeting for Friendship Amongst Peoples Foundation. Special thanks to Br. Stéphane Milovitch, Sara Cibin and Marie Armelle Beaulieu for organizing and preparing the exhibit. With the collaboratio

 

Eight hundred years ago, in 1217, Saint Francis of Assisi decided to send the first Franciscan Friars to all the nations. The Franciscan world was divided into provinces, and the Holy Land became the first Province and the “pearl” of the new order, for it was the land of Jesus, where the love of God was made flesh.

In 1219 Saint Francis came to the Holy Land where he had his historical encounter with the Sultan of Egypt Melek-el-Kamel, the nephew of the Great Saladin. This event revolutionized the encounter of Christians and Muslims in those lands.

From that moment on, the presence of the Franciscans in the Holy Land became more and more stable and fundamental in keeping the memory of the historical importance of Christianity which is rooted in that land. In 1333, thanks to the King of Naples, they obtained the location of the Last Supper and the right to celebrate the Holy Mass inside the Holy Sepulcher. This was the beginning of the Custody of the Holy Land, name of the mission that Pope Clemens VI entrusted to the friars in 1342, when he asked them, in the name of all of Christianity, to be guardians of the places where Jesus spent his earthly life

The Franciscans have safeguarded and honored with prayer and study the places that Jesus knew, loved, and inhabited. Moreover, they have taken care of the men of that land, living stones that testify yet again to the newness of Christ in a land so often divided by conflict.
The custody of the Holy Land is a concrete mission: it means to look after the liturgy in the sanctuaries, welcome the pilgrims, sustain the local Christian communities with schools and help to poor families, and to conserve the material signs that this land offers in testimony to Christ and his Church.

The Custody of the Holy Land in time has kept alive the memory of the historical significance of Christianity which is inscribed in these places so that, also, pilgrims coming from all around the world may touch these Places, which still today constitute the irreplaceable witness of God’s revelation and his love for man.

In the first part of the exhibit, there will be a projection of an immersive multimedia video on the history of Jerusalem coming from the Museum of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum with a transformation of the environment in which it is daily projected.

The second part of the exhibit will have a photo gallery and images on the beauty and conservation of the Holy Places, and so the history of the Custody.

Moreover, the project Terra Sancta Museum will be presented, the only Museum in the world on the roots of Christianity and the conservation of the Holy Land.