Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre, stressed that there could be no peace within the Holy Land unless there may be justice and the understanding that each side, Israel and Palestine, have a right to exist.
The cardinal spoke on Thursday to Vatican journalists, where he discussed the work that his order financially supports within the Holy Land.
The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre was founded by Pope Pius IX in 1898 with the role of funding and sustaining the Christian community within the Holy Land. Its roughly 30,000 members, knights and dames, usually are not only bestowed with an honorary title but also they are required to make financial contributions to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
Filoni underlined that no solution will work, be it one state or two states, unless justice is guaranteed for each side involved within the war.
“There could be no peace without justice. An unjust peace could create recent wars, injustices and violence,” he said. Addressing the origins of the conflict, the cardinal said that “when a people feels to have suffered an injustice or doesn’t feel heard, hate grows and may develop into violent.”
“We have to start out by saying that one cannot deny Palestinians their right to exist, just as you’ll be able to’t deny Israel its right to exist,” Filoni said.
The cardinal added that the Israeli invasion in Gaza was “illegal” and “violent.”
Filoni made clear that the order is just not involved within the politics of the Holy Land and “is just not an architect of peace.” While the knights and dames might circuitously interfere with peace and diplomacy, he said, “we could be staff.”
The charities funded by the order mostly help Christian families within the Holy Land, which currently make up only 2% of the population. But its schools and hospitals are open to all, Filoni said, which create a framework for peaceful coexistence.
“If we’re capable of prove that peace is feasible, then it could actually be applied to all within the Holy Land,” he said. “Just because we do not speak about coexistence, it does not imply it doesn’t exist. The way forward for this land is peaceful coexistence, which remains to be possible, but now we have to construct it,” he added.
© Religion News Service
