Vatican Nativity scene unveiled -
and the Pope lights the candle of peace
Pope opens Christmas amid security fears
due to past Vatican breaches and Rome letter bombs
by Nicole Winfield
VATICAN CITY, Dec. 24 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI is ushering in Christmas with an evening Mass on Friday amid heightened security concerns following the package bombings at two Rome embassies and Christmas Eve security breaches at the Vatican the past two years running.
Benedict kicked off the holiday as night fell by silently lighting a candle in his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square. Heavy rains kept the traditionally large crowds to a minimum.
At 2100 GMT, Benedict will celebrate Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. During that service in 2008 and 2009, a mentally disturbed woman lunged at the pope — and last year managed to pull him to the ground as he processed down the aisle.
Security was expected to be vigilant as a result, and also due to Thursday's package bombings at the Swiss and Chilean embassies, for which anarchists claimed responsibility. The two people who opened the envelopes were injured.
The bombings added to tensions in the capital following a violent, anti-government protest last week in the historic centre and a fake bomb found Tuesday on a Rome subway.
All eyes Friday were expected to be on the crowds inside St. Peter's — particularly on anyone wearing a red hooded sweat shirt. For the past two years in a row during Christmas Eve Mass, a woman wearing a red sweat shirt has lunged at the pope as he walked down the main aisle.
The Vatican has identified her as Susanna Maiolo, a Swiss-Italian national with a history of psychiatric problems.
In 2008, the Pope's security detail blocked her from getting to him. But in 2009, she jumped the wooden security barrier along the aisle, grabbed Benedict's vestments and pulled him to the ground as the Pope's bodyguards toppled her.
The Pontiff wasn't hurt and after a few seconds on the ground got up and continued with his processional entry and the Mass. But Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a retired Vatican diplomat who was near the Pope, suffered a broken hip in the fall.
Maiolo was treated for some time at a clinic in Rome, and Benedict's personal secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, visited her there. Three weeks later, Maiolo and her family met privately with the Pope at the Vatican and the Pontiff forgave her.
The Vatican reviewed security procedures after the knockdown. But officials have long warned there will always be risks to the Pontiff since he is regularly surrounded by tens of thousands of people for his weekly audiences, Masses, papal greetings and other events.
And the context in the region of where the first Christmas took place, as we prepare to welcome the birth of the Christ Child...
Christmas joy mixed with threats
for Mideast Christians
BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 (AFP) - Christians in the Middle East prepared on Friday to celebrate Christmas, some in fear of attacks against their community, as in Iraq, and others in the most discreet way possible, as in Saudi Arabia.
For Iraq's battered Christian community, threats of attacks from Al-Qaeda and mourning for the victims of an October massacre at a Baghdad church have turned a normally festive season into one of fear and sadness.
Many Mass gatherings in Iraq were cancelled on Friday, and Saturday services will be held during the morning for safety reasons.
Security measures have been stepped up after Al-Qaeda threats against Christians, with protective walls erected around some churches and the number of soldiers and police guarding churches strengthened.
On October 31, militants laid siege to Baghdad's Our Lady of Salvation church, leaving 44 worshippers, two priests and seven security forces personnel dead in an attack claimed by an Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq.
Ten days later a string of attacks targeted the homes of Christians in Baghdad, killing six people and wounding 33 others.
On Friday, Chaldean Catholic archbishop Monsignor Louis Sarko said in a message from Kirkuk that Iraqi Christians must remain steadfast, despite their fears.
"Today we are living a painful experience in Iraq, which reached its peak with the massacre at Our Lady of Salvation, which touched both Christians and Muslims. But we must persevere in the face of disaster," Sarko said.
"We will not surrender to division and frustration," he said.
Father Saad Sirop Hanna, the priest of the Saint Joseph Chaldean Catholic church in central Baghdad, told his congregation at a Christmas Eve service: "Do not fear -- that is the message today."
In Saudi Arabia, Christians will be as discreet as possible in their Christmas celebrations, as the Gulf kingdom forbids the overt practice of any religion but Islam.
In the capital Riyadh, there are no signs of the Christmas season.
"We don't do much for Christmas; we have to be careful," said Raul, one of the more than one million mostly Christian Filipino migrant workers in the country, who along with two other fellow welders from Pangasinan were doing their weekly shopping at the popular Pinoy supermarket in Riyadh.
"I put up some Christmas lights in my apartment, and made a tree in the shop," said Valentin, a metal shop worker from Cavite. "You can't buy a Christmas tree in Saudi Arabia."
Religious services take place, but are exceedingly hush-hush. The state oil giant Aramco, with thousands of non-Muslim employees, has long allowed services in its tightly guarded compounds in Eastern Province.
Foreign communities also organise their own services, though most of the Christians in the country do not have access.
Although private worship in homes is protected under government orders, many Saudis including the religious police are not aware of that and so Christians are particularly cautious of attracting attention.
In other Gulf oil monarchies, major shopping centres have been particularly lively, with shoppers drawn to decorations and Christmas presents.
Various hotels in the United Arab Emirates have decorated trees, with one in Abu Dhabi housing a 13-metre-high (42 foot) version decorated with jewellery said to be worth more than 11 million dollars (8.4 million euros), making it "the most expensive Christmas tree ever."
In shopping areas of the Syrian capital Damascus, Christmas ornaments, toys, Santa Claus suits and sweets can be found.
And Christmas trees have been put up in some Syrian cities, including one in Safita near Tartus in the country's east that is 18 metres (60 feet) tall and has 3,200 lights, with a large nativity scene nearby.
Lebanon, a tiny multi-confessional Mediterranean state that is the only Arab country with a Christian head of state, is one of the few countries in the region where Christians have full religious freedom.
Christmas celebrations there transcend the multitude of religious communities, members of which formed often sectarian-based militias in Lebanon's devastating 1975-1990 civil war.
Many Muslim families have Christmas trees and decorations, and gifts and Santa Claus are social phenomena in the country which is caught up in a frenzy of buying that would match many Western states.
Mass is held in Christian communities across Lebanon, including those in religiously mixed areas.
South of the border, crowds of tourists and Palestinians flocked into the West Bank town of Bethlehem, where Christians believe Jesus was born, to celebrate Christmas.
Bethlehem bounces back
in time for Christmas
By Matt Beynon Rees
Dec. 24, 2010
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — For the first time in years, the people of Bethlehem have something more to celebrate at Christmas than the recollection of an important birth in their town 2,000 years ago.
After the city’s economy was devastated by the Palestinian intifada over the last decade, Bethlehem’s economic recovery has picked up pace in the last year with gross domestic product rising by 9 percent.
This Christmas the city’s streets are packed with tourists and pilgrims, and if the Holy Family were to arrive today they would, once more, discover that there’s no room at the inn — Bethlehem’s hotels are filled to capacity.
Locals see this as an important marker on their road back to normality. “Tourists are coming. Things are all right in Bethlehem,” said Walid Zawahra, a taxi driver.
Zawahra stood beside his yellow Mercedes cab, watching tourists pour through the massive gate in Israel’s security wall around Bethlehem. The gate is opened only once a year, for Christmas, so that the Roman Catholic Patriarch can enter in procession with his entourage from Jerusalem. The rest of the year, visitors must pass through a smaller entrance at the nearby checkpoint.
Security remains a factor, however. The streets beyond the gate were closed to traffic. Palestinian security forces were out in force on the roads around Rachel’s Tomb, which Jews believe to be the site of the burial of the biblical matriarch and where Israeli soldiers still stand guard.
The tomb, which has taken on the dimensions of a fortress in the last decade, is a frequent point of friction between the soldiers and Palestinian rioters, and the authorities don’t want Christmas marred by any violence.
The Church of the Nativity, which stands over the site of Jesus’s birth, opened Friday after a 24-hour security closure, as police swept it for bombs before the Patriarch’s arrival for Midnight Mass.
In Manger Square, outside the church, two new cafes have been doing a bumper business, hosting local families and tourists late into the night. A stage built against the buttresses of the Armenian monastery at the front of the church hosted live musical performances in the evening.
The Bethlehem area also has something novel to entertain its young people — namely, something to do after dark. Until recently, youngsters in Bethlehem complained that their city shut down at twilight.
Two night clubs opened in the last few months in the largely Christian district of Beit Jala. One of them is named Taboo, because it serves pork and, therefore, contravenes the proscriptions of Islam by which most West Bank restaurants operate.
The intifada, which began in 2000, devastated Bethlehem’s tourist-oriented economy. Almost 90 percent of the souvenir shops in the city closed. Many of the city’s residents emigrated to the United States or South America. Most of those who left were Christian Palestinians, making a shrinking minority feel even more threatened.
This year, the relative quiet has encouraged tourists to return. The Palestinian Tourism Ministry says
a record 1.5 million people have visited Bethlehem this year, 60 percent more than last year.
The Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce says there are 31 hotels operating in the city, compared to only six in 1995. Three more hotels are under construction.
Officials at the Chamber of Commerce add that the biggest disco in the Middle East will begin construction in Bethlehem in March.
As always in the Middle East, there remain plenty of reasons to cry “Humbug” in the face of this Christmas spirit. Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are stymied, meaning that there’s always the chance violence could engulf Bethlehem once more.
And local Christians point out that their numbers have dwindled to a mere 2 percent of the West Bank population, raising the possibility of future Christmases more or less without Christians.
But the city the Patriarch enters today is more attuned to the message of hope inherent in the Christmas holiday than it has been for years.
Benedict XVI at the Grotto
of the Nativity, Bethlehem
May 13, 2009
Photos on the left, above, and inset of the Nativity 'starburst' marker which Tradition says marks the spot where the Christ Child was born, are stock photos to make the context of the Nativity chapel clearer. It is located in the underground crypt of the Church of the Nativity.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/12/2010 23:29]