Rome Newsroom, Nov 24, 2020 / 12:00 pm
Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa has entrusted his new mission as Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to the prayer of contemplative religious orders in the Holy Land.
Pizzaballa traveled to Galilee and the Sharon Plain Nov. 21 to entrust his mission leading the estimated 293,000 Latin Catholics in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Cyprus to the prayers of Discalced Carmelite sisters and Trappist monks.
He offered Mass for the Feast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary at the Stella Maris Monastery, located on Mount Carmel in Haifa, where his predecessor as Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Albert, gave the monastic rule for the first Carmelite monks sometime between 1206 and 1214.
After a heart-to-heart conversation with the Carmelite nuns, Pizzaballa visited the Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows Abbey in Latroun to entrust himself and the diocese to the prayer of the Trappist monks who reside there, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem's website.