Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming trip to the Holy Land will be bittersweet for Gaza's tiny Catholic community, angry the pontiff is not also visiting their violence-wracked impoverished coastal strip."We will ask him why he came, what he intends on saying to the Christians, the Jews, the Muslims and why he isn't coming to Gaza," said Father Manuel Mussalem, of Gaza's sole Catholic Church that counts a mere 200 or so members.
"We'll tell him that this is not the right moment to come and visit the holy places, while Jerusalem is occupied," he added.
Along with the rest of Gaza's Palestinians, the territory's Christians have faced increasing hardship over the past several years as the tiny coastal strip has been swept by violence and an ever-tightening Israeli blockade.
An estimated 2,500 members of all Christian denominations live amid 1.5 million Muslims in a territory that has been controlled by the Islamist Hamas movement for nearly two years, and they face special dilemmas.
After dozens of Christians have left Gaza to seek better opportunities abroad in recent years, residents say the territory should have been included on the itinerary of a pope who, Vatican officials say, has set encouraging Christians to remain in the Holy Land as a goal of his trip.
"We would have liked it if he came here," said Rania Mikhail, 32, a student of English at the Holy Family school. "We are happy that he is coming to Palestine, but what can he do for us?
"We want him to do something for Gaza, not only for the Christians, but also for the Muslims who are living in this prison. We would have liked him to come to Gaza since no one pays attention to what happens to us."
When Benedict announced in early March that he would visit the Holy Land in May to pray "for the precious gift of unity and peace for the Middle East and for all of humanity," many Gaza Christians were not pleased.
They urged the pontiff to shun Israel in protest at its December-January onslaught on impoverished Gaza that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians.
"Many people, including among the clergy, were not pleased with the visit coming at this time," said Elias Odeh, a parish priest just outside the Israeli city of Nazareth.
Bassam Shahtoot, a member of the Nazareth Roman Catholic parish council, said: "We had mixed feelings at first about the visit."
"We want the pope to come, but the timing is problematic because of the Gaza war where many Palestinians were killed," he said. "Some people are using this visit politically" to polish Israel's image.
Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Vatican custodian of the holy sites, defended the decision to hold the second official papal visit to the region since the creation of Israel in 1948.
"You can also say that just because of that it's important to come," he said. "In spite of all the problems, it's important to come and to encourage" Christians in the Holy Land to stay.
"This visit is aimed first and foremost at encouraging them to remain in this country," Pizzaballa said.
Christians in Gaza say that despite their reservations, they hope the visit will help the lot of all Palestinians there, no matter what their faith.
"It is an important visit and we hope that it will help to improve the situation of the Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims, in Gaza and in the West Bank living under Israeli occupation," said Naji al-Tarazi, a 40-year-old government worker.
Gaza's Christians enjoy good relations with Hamas, but in the months after the Islamists' violent takeover of the coastal strip in June 2007 many lived in fear of attacks by shadowy extremist groups.
Such attacks included the murder of the manager of Gaza's only Christian bookshop, a bomb that destroyed a library in the Gaza City premises of the Young Men's Christian Association, and a bombing at a Christian school.
As Hamas tightened its grip on the enclave such incidents subsided, but the hardships of living in a virtually sealed-off strip of land that Israel considers a hostile entity have only increased.
"The situation is very difficult for us," said Iyyad Sayegh, a 39-year-old Gaza pharmacist. "We had hoped that after the end of the war, solutions would be found, but there is nothing for the moment."
The papal visit will be an occasion for nearly all of Gaza's Catholics to leave the territory they call an open-air prison, as the Israeli authorities have promised Vatican officials that they will issue exit permits.
"If his sermons end up changing things for us, we will be very happy," said student Mikhail. "But if not, then this visit will have been in vain."
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(Source: AFP)