Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomini Domine, Hosanna in Excelsis, part twenty-seven

President Donald John Trump said in an address to that nation that listed his administration’s accomplishments in the past eleven months that he had brought to “peace” to the Middle East for the first time in three thousand years:

After rebuilding the United States military in my first term, and with the addition, we are adding right now, we have the most powerful military anywhere in the world, and it’s not even close. I’ve restored American strength, settled eight wars in 10 months, destroyed the Iran nuclear threat, and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years peace to the Middle East, and secured the release of the hostages, both living and dead. (Full Transcript of President Trump’s Speech on the Economy.)

Donald John Trump has always been good at promoting himself in hyperbolic, grandiose ways, but to assert that he has brought “peace” “ to the Middle East for the first time in three thousand years not only incorrect contemporaneously given the fact that the Israeli military is still killing Palestinians and that its former allies in Hamas are still conducting their own military strike but is also incorrect historically on a number of levels, the most important of which is there was peace through the entire world, including the Holy Land, when the Prince of Peace Himself was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Midnight in Bethlehem:

In the year 5199th from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, in the year 2957th from the flood, in the year 2015th from the birth of Abraham, in the year 1510th from the going forth of the people of Israel out of Egypt under Moses, in the year 1032th from the anointing of David as King, in the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel, in the 194th Olympiad, in the 752nd from the foundation of the city of Rome, in the 42nd year of the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus, in the 6th age of the world, while the whole earth was at peace, Jesus Christ, Himself Eternal God and Son of the Eternal Father, being pleased to hallow the world by His most gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Ghost, and when nine months were passed after His conception, all kneel down was born of the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem of Juda made Man, Our Lord Jesus Christ was born according to the flesh. (Office of Prime, the Divine Office, Vigil of Christmas, December 24.)

Well, what does this mean to Donald John Trump as he, fashioning himself as our secular “prince of peace” with his gold-trimmed decorations and golden ballroom in the White House and who went to the trouble of having a golden statue of himself situated in a rebuilt Gaza generated by artificial intelligence, who has never heard of the Office of Prime?

Nothing, of course, and it means absolutely nothing to the Christophobe named Benjamin Netanyahu, who is going to urge President Trump to conduct more strike upon Iran:

WASHINGTON — Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile program, which was damaged by Israeli military strikes earlier this year, and are preparing to brief President Donald Trump about options for attacking it again, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans and four former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.

Israeli officials also are concerned that Iran is reconstituting nuclear enrichment sites the U.S. bombed in June, the sources said. But, they added, the officials view Iran’s efforts to rebuild facilities where they produce the ballistic missiles and to repair its crippled air defense systems as more immediate concerns.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet later this month in Florida at the president’s Mar-a-Lago estate. At that meeting, the sources said, Netanyahu is expected to make the case to Trump that Iran’s expansion of its ballistic missile program poses a threat that could necessitate swift action.

They said part of his argument is expected to be that Iran’s actions present perils not only to Israel but also to the broader region, including U.S. interests. The Israeli leader is expected to present Trump with options for the U.S. to join or assist in any new military operations, the sources said.

Asked Thursday about a Dec. 29 meeting with Netanyahu, Trump told reporters, “We haven’t set it up formally, but he’d like to see me.” Israeli officials have announced a Dec. 29 meeting.

The Israeli government declined to comment. The Iranian Mission at the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iranian government corroborated the United States government’s assessment that Operation Midnight Hammer totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement. “As President Trump has said, if Iran pursued a nuclear weapon, that site would be attacked and would be wiped out before they even got close.”

Israel’s plans to brief Trump on — and give him the option to join — possible additional military strikes in Iran come as the president is considering military strikes in Venezuela, which would open a new warfront for the U.S., and as he is touting his administration’s bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and success negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Trump said told Americans he’s “destroyed the Iran nuclear threat and ended the war in Gaza, bringing for the first time in 3,000 years, peace to the Middle East.”

The Israeli concerns about Iran come as Tehran has expressed interest in resuming diplomatic talks with the U.S. aimed at curtailing its nuclear deal, which could potentially complicate Israel’s approaching Trump about new strikes.

The funding of Iranian proxies in the region also is top of mind for the Israelis, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans.

“The nuclear weapons program is very concerning. There’s an attempt to reconstitute. It’s not that immediate,” this person said.

The strikes the U.S. conducted in June against Iran, known as Operation Midnight Hammer, included more than 100 aircraft, a submarine and seven B-2 bombers. Trump has said they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, though some early assessments indicated the damage may not have been as extensive as the president has said.

Israeli forces at the same time struck several of Iran’s ballistic missile sites.

Israeli military strikes in April and October 2024 also damaged all of Iran’s S-300 air defense systems, the most advanced system the country operates, clearing the way for manned flights into Iranian airspace months later by dramatically reducing the threat to pilots.

Unlike strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program, direct U.S. military involvement was needed to significantly damage Iran’s nuclear sites as that required American-made 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs.

Last week, Trump hinted he might be open to returning to talks with Iran, while also warning Tehran against trying to reconstitute its ballistic missile or nuclear programs.

He said Iran “can try” to rebuild its ballistic missile program, but “it’s going to take them a long time to come back.”

“But if they do want to come back without a deal, then we’re going to obliterate that one, too,” Trump said. “You know, we can knock out their missiles very quickly, we have great power.”

Prior to the strikes in June, the Israelis had presented Trump with four options for military action, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans. Israeli officials laid out the options on a coffee table in the Oval Office, this person said. One involved Israel going it alone, another included limited U.S. support, a third was the U.S. and Israel conducting joint operations against Iran, and a fourth had the U.S. conducting the operation on its own, this person said. Ultimately Trump decided to approve a joint operation. The person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans suggested Netanyahu may present Trump with a similar set of options during their Mar-a-Lago meeting.

The fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is also expected to feature prominently in the talks between Netanyahu and Trump, amid concerns both sides are failing to take action to carry out the next phase of the deal.

Under the second stage of the agreement, Israel is supposed to withdraw its forces from Gaza, and an interim body is to assume authority over the Palestinian enclave instead of Hamas. An international stabilization force also is supposed to be deployed to Gaza.

Trump could be less enthusiastic about new military action in Iran if there continues to be friction between U.S. and Israeli officials over Netanyahu’s approach to the ceasefire, two former Israeli officials said.

Left unchecked, Iran’s production of ballistic missiles could increase to as many as 3,000 per year, according to the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans and former U.S. officials briefed on the plans.

The threat of ballistic missiles, and the number of them that the Iranians could use in an attack, is Israel’s most immediate concern, said one of the former Israeli officials who has discussed the concerns with current Israeli officials.

“There is no real question after the last conflict that we can gain aerial superiority and can do far more damage to Iran than Iran can do to Israel,” the official said. “But the threat of the missiles is very real, and we weren’t able to prevent them all last time.”

A large volume of ballistic missiles would help Iran better defend its nuclear enrichment sites, the person with direct knowledge of Israel’s plans and one of the former U.S. officials briefed on the plans said. They said Israeli officials have the same concerns about Iran rebuilding its missile defense systems and funding and arming its proxies in the region, believing Tehran would then fast track reconstituting its nuclear program because it would better be able to defend its enrichment sites. (Netanyahu plans to brief Trump on possible new Iran strikes.)

Benjamin Netanyahu, who has nothing but contempt for the Prince of Peace, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and whose troops have blown up Christian churches, shrines, and statues, is not interested in “peace” but in the “restoration” of what he thinks is Israel’s “rightful place” politically and territorially as he, like most the Biblical Jews of the past and most Talmudists today, conceive of a messias who has not only not yet come but, far from coming in humility and anonymity in a poor cave inhabited by barn animals in Bethlehem, will manifest himself thunderously out of a mountainside and be recognized by all as the rightful leader of all Jews who will vanquish their opponents for all time. This false belief is an inversion as the “messias” the Jews expect is Antichrist, who will be vanquished by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ it the final battle.

Netanyahu is, of course, but a minion of Antichrist, one of many, including the conciliar revolutionaries themselves, as he has overseen a genocide of innocent human beings in Gaza that destroyed the region’s infrastructure, rationed food to the point of starvation levels, obliterated almost every habitable building, decimated the region’s healthcare system, abducted and tortured innocent Palestinians who had no relationship to Hamas, and forced hundreds of thousands of people into the cold and others into an exile without a place to call home.

Consider the following:

Israel has penned us all into a ‘debate’, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire – not the genocide it is waging by other means.

The biggest con trick Israel has managed to pull off over the past two years is imposing entirely phony parameters on a “debate” in the West about the credibility of the death toll in Gaza, now officially standing at just over 70,000.

It is not just that we have been endlessly bogged down in rows about whether Gaza’s medical authorities can be trusted, or how many of the dead are Hamas fighters. (Despite Israeli disinformation campaigns, the Israeli military itself believes more than 80 per cent of the dead are civilians.)

Or even that these “debates” always ignore the fact that, early on, Israel wrecked Gaza’s capacity to count its dead by destroying the enclave’s governmental offices and its hospitals. The 70,000 figure is likely to be a drastic under-estimate.

No, the biggest con trick is that Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate”, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire.

The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods.

These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on.

Imagine your own societies levelled in the way Gaza has been.

How long would your elderly parents survive in this hellscape?

How well would your diabetic child fare, or your sister with asthma, or your brother with cancer?

How well would you cope with catching pneumonia, or even a common cold, if you hadn’t had more than one small meal a day for months on end?

How would your wife deal with a difficult childbirth if there were no anaesthetics, or no hospital nearby, or a barely functioning hospital overwhelmed with victims from Israel’s latest bombing run.

And what would be the chances of your baby surviving if its mother could produce no milk from her starvation diet? And if you could not give the baby formula feed because Israel was blocking supplies from entry into the enclave? And if, anyway, the contaminated water supply could not be mixed into the formula powder?

None of these kinds of deaths are included in the figure of 70,000. And all precedents show that many, many times more people are killed through these indirect methods than directly through fatal injuries from bombs and bullets.

According to a letter from experts in this field to the Lancet, studies of other wars – most of them far less destructive than Israel’s on the tiny enclave – indicate that between three and 15 times more people are killed by indirect, rather than direct, methods of warfare.

The authors conservatively estimate an indirect death toll four times greater than the direct death toll. That would mean, at a minimum, 350,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza through Israel’s actions.

The reality is likely to be even worse. That is without even mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been left with horrific injuries and psychological trauma.

Israel’s war planners know exactly how this direct-to-indirect ratio works. Which is why they chose to destroy nearly every home in Gaza, to bomb the power, sanitation and water facilities, to level the hospitals, and to block aid month after month.

They knew this would be the way Israel could carry out a genocide while offering its allies – western governments and its army of lobbyists – a “get out of jail card” for their active complicity.

Donald Trump’s so-called “ceasefire” is just another layer of deception in this endless game of smoke and mirrors. The UN’s child protection agency, Unicef, reports that less than a quarter of aid trucks are getting into Gaza, past Israel’s continuing starvation blockade, despite Israeli commitments agreed as part of the “ceasefire”. Apparently, this doesn’t register as a gross ceasefire violation. It goes unnoticed.

Unicef reports further that in October alone, at the start of the “ceasefire”, nearly 18,000 new mothers and babies had to be hospitalised in Gaza from acute malnutrition.

The genocide isn’t over. Israel may have slowed the rate of direct killings it is committing by bombing Gaza, but the indirect killings continue unabated. And so does the Israeli-engineered “debate” in the West, one designed to obscure and excuse the mass murder of Gaza’s population. (Israel’s Biggest Con Trick: Hiding the True Numbers It Has Killed in Gaza.)

This is a very good and heartbreaking recitation of the facts. 

However, the author does not recognize that every human being on the face of the earth must view the events in the world, including their own personal tragedies and sufferings, no matter how unjustly imposed in the human order of things, and to accept the chastisements Our Lord sends to them with gratitude for being deemed worthy to suffer with Him and for Him as members of His true Church.

One of the greatest tragedies of our time, though, is the fact that few people look upon suffering as a blessing nor are willing to accept it as occurring within the Providence of God for their own sanctification and salvation because they are not members of His true Church and/or because such truths are not being taught in most places within the counterfeit church of conciliarism.

This does not mean, of course, that those aggrieved because of rank injustices such as those that the Israeli government have brutally an cruelly imposed upon the people of Gaza should not seek justice without malice and in due proportion to the harm caused by their malefactors, but it does mean that we are supposed to understand that the only kind of justice that genocidal malefactors will ever face will be at their reckoning before the Divine Judge Himself, Christ the King.  

The Israelis themselves know nothing of this, which is why the horror stories of kidnapping and torture of Gazans continue to unfold, including the kidnapping of a prominent Gazan physician five months ago:

The genocidal Israeli military has officially admitted to abducting a renowned doctor from Gaza over five months ago. Subsequently, his daughter was abducted in order to pressure him into providing false confessions, a new report has revealed.

One of the most prominent medical professionals in Gaza, Dr. Marwan al-Hams was serving as the director of Abu Youssef al Najjar Hospital and the director of field hospitals at the Gaza Ministry of Health at the time of his abduction on 21 July 2025, while he was travelling to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis.

Dr. al-Hams was abducted by the Mista’arvim unit of the occupation forces. Mista’arvim comprises Arab-looking and Arabic-speaking Israeli terrorists who infiltrate Palestinian communities and pose as locals to execute their campaigns.

On July 22, a day after the abduction of Dr. al-Hams, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) published a report detailing the circumstances of his abduction, during which his leg was wounded and a journalist accompanying him was killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts and information collected by PCHR, at around 12:00 on Monday, 21 July 2025, 4 armed individuals wearing civilian clothing raided Sea Castle Cafeteria, located opposite the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) field hospital on al-Rasheed Coastal Street in al-Mawasi, western Rafah,” the PCHR report stated.

“The assailants opened fire from guns they had on Dr. Marwan Shafiq ‘Ali al-Hams (53), Director of Abu Yousif al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah and the official assigned to oversee field hospitals in the Gaza Strip as well as Spokesperson of the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH). As a result, Dr. Marwan was wounded in the leg while freelance photojournalist Tamer Rebhi Rafiq al-Za’anin (35) was killed and another photojournalist in UK’s Fourth Channel was wounded- his name is Ibrahim ‘Atef ‘Atiyah Abu ‘Asheibah (32).”

The Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy reported at the time that Dr. al-Hams was being detained “under dire humanitarian conditions.”

The terrorists of the Israeli military labelled Dr. al-Hams a “Hamas terrorist” in a tweet last week, formally announcing his abduction.

“Marwan Al-Hams, a Hamas terrorist involved in the determination of Lt. Hadar Goldin’s death, was apprehended in a special intelligence-based operation,” the terrorist Israeli military announced in a tweet on November 21.

The occupation forces’ tweet, which was accompanied by a photo of Dr. al-Hams with the text “Apprehended” in the same style in which it announces the death and capture of Palestinian resistance fighters, continued: “Al-Hams was also suspected of knowing the location of Lt. Goldin’s burial in the ‘White-Crowned’ tunnel in Rafah. The operation in July 2025, was part of dozens of confidential operations conducted in the past 6 months to retrieve Lt. Hadar Goldin & return him for burial in Israel.”

The body of Goldin, a terrorist in the Israeli occupation forces, was captured by Palestinian resistance in 2014 during an Israeli assault on Gaza. The Israeli army announced Goldin’s death soon after his capture. He is believed to have been killed in an aerial bombardment after the Israelis activated the Hannibal Directive during their assault on Gaza in the summer of 2014 in order to prevent his capture. More than 2,300 Palestinians were slaughtered by the Jewish state during its 2014 assault on Gaza.

The Israelis have accused Dr. al-Hams, who comes from Rafah, of knowing the location of Goldin’s burial despite providing no evidence for their claims. Despite abducting Dr. al-Hams in July and subjecting him to extremely harsh conditions in detention, the Israelis could not trace Goldin’s grave.

Goldin’s remains were eventually exhumed and handed over to the Red Cross by Hamas on November 9 during the ongoing exchange deal, as part of the so-called “ceasefire.”

To make matters worse for Dr. al-Hams and his family, the Israelis have also abducted his daughter, nurse Tasneem al-Hams, in order to pressure him into providing false confessions. Like her father, Tasneem was abducted by undercover Israeli forces while carrying out humanitarian work at a medical facility in Al-Mawasi in early October.

Euro-Med Monitor documented the circumstances of Tasneem’s October 2 abduction. “A small truck carrying four armed men and a driver in civilian clothing arrived near the medical point in the Al-Ard Al-Tayyiba area, west of Khan Yunis Governorate,” the Geneva-based human rights monitor reported on October 5.

“The assailants blocked the nurse’s path as she headed to work, then several of them exited the vehicle, assaulted her, gagged her, and forcibly dragged her into the truck. The gunmen fired into the air to disperse citizens who attempted to intervene before fleeing towards northern Rafah Governorate, an area under Israeli army control.”

An Israeli court eventually ordered Tasneem’s release last week. Her family and friends waited to welcome her on the night of November 16, but she was never released.

On Monday, the Palestinian Centre for Prisoners’ Advocacy reported that it had “obtained documented information” that Tasneem was being held by the occupation “as a tool of pressure and coercion” on her father.

“The Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Advocacy reports that it has obtained documented information confirming that the Israeli occupation authorities are using the detained Palestinian nurse, Tasneem Marwan al-Hams, the daughter of the imprisoned Palestinian physician Dr. Marwan al-Hams, as a tool of pressure and coercion in an attempt to force her father to provide statements and confessions that serve the occupation’s narrative in certain cases,” the advocacy group said in a statement.

“The kidnapping of nurse Tasneem al-Hams—which did not prompt a single international response from the global community—preceded by the abduction of her father from his workplace, and the ongoing abuses committed against this family inside Israeli prisons, along with what is now coming to light and what may emerge later, all confirm once again, and without ambiguity, that the occupation persists in employing the methods of gangs, the language of thuggery, and the law of the jungle in its treatment of Palestinian prisoners and detainees,” the report added.

Medical infrastructure and professionals have been among the primary targets of the terrorist Israeli forces during the last 25 months of their genocidal campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza. Dozens of doctors, nurses, and other medical staff remain incarcerated in Israeli dungeons, with the case of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya being the most prominent one.

Dr. Abu Safiya’s son, Ibrahim, was killed by the Israelis during their months-long siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital, before it was emptied completely last December. (How Israel abducted a Gaza doctor — and then his daughter — to force false confessions .)

This is all quite monstrous, of course, but it is what the Israelis have been doing since 1948 and it is all the work of the devil, every single bit of it.

The Israelis have kept “suspected terrorists” in underground jails with no access to the daylight:

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.

The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a teenage food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.

The two men were transferred to the subterranean Rakefet complex in January, and described regular beatings and violence consistent with well-documented torture in other Israeli detention centres.

Rakefet prison was opened in the early 1980s to house a handful of the most dangerous organised crime figures in Israel but closed a few years later on the grounds that it was inhumane. The far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, ordered it back into service after the 7 October attacks in 2023.

The cells, a tiny exercise “yard” and a lawyers’ meeting room are all underground, so inmates live without any natural light.

The jail was initially designed for a small number of high-security inmates occupying individual cells, holding 15 men when it shut in 1985. In recent months, about 100 detainees have been incarcerated there, official data obtained by PCATI shows.

Under the ceasefire agreed in mid-October, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners who had been convicted in Israeli courts, and 1,700 Palestinian detainees from Gaza who had been held indefinitely without charge or trial. The young trader held at Rakefet was among them.

However, the scale of detentions has been so vast that even after that mass release, at least 1,000 others are still held by Israel under the same conditions, including the nurse represented by PCATI.

“Though the war is officially over, [Palestinians from Gaza] are still imprisoned under legally contested and violent wartime conditions that violate international humanitarian law and amount to torture,” PCATI said.

The two men who met PCATI lawyers in September were a 34-year-old nurse detained while at work in a hospital in December 2023 and a young trader seized in October 2024 as he passed through an Israeli checkpoint.

“In the cases of the clients we visited, we are speaking about civilians,” said the PCATI lawyer Janan Abdu. “The man I spoke to was an 18-year-old who worked selling food. He was taken from a checkpoint on a road.”

Ben-Gvir had told Israeli media and a member of parliament that Rakefet was being rehabilitated to hold Nukhba – meaning “elite” – Hamas fighters who led massacres inside Israel Oct 7th, and Hezbollah special forces fighters captured in Lebanon.

Israeli officials said no Palestinians involved in the 2023 attacks were released under the ceasefire deal that resulted in the teenage prisoner being returned to Gaza.

The Israeli Prison Service (IPS) did not respond to questions about the status and identity of other prisoners held at Rakefet, which means “cyclamen flower” in Hebrew.

Classified Israeli data indicates the majority of Palestinians taken prisoner in Gaza during the war were civilians. Israel’s supreme court ruled in 2019 that it was lawful to hold the bodies of Palestinians as bargaining chips for future negotiations, and rights groups have accused it of doing the same with living detainees from Gaza.

Unique abuse

Conditions for Palestinians were “horrific by intention” at all prisons, said Tal Steiner, the executive director of PCATI. Current and former detainees, and whistleblowers from the Israeli military, have all detailed systemic violations of international law.

However, Rakefet imposes a unique form of abuse. Holding people below ground without daylight for months on end has “extreme implications” for psychological health, Steiner said. “It’s very hard to remain intact when you are held in such oppressive and difficult conditions.”

It also affects physical health, impairing basic biological functions from circadian rhythms needed for sleep to vitamin D production.

Despite working as a human rights lawyer, and visiting prisons at the complex in Ramla, south-east of Tel Aviv, where Rakefet is located, Steiner had not heard of the underground jail before Ben-Gvir ordered it back into service.

It was closed before PCATI was founded, so the legal team turned to old media archives and the memoir of Rafael Suissa, the head of the IPS in the mid-1980s to find out more about the jail.

“[Suissa] wrote that he understood being held below ground 24/7 is just too cruel, too inhumane for any person to endure, regardless of what their actions have been,” Steiner said.

This summer, PCATI lawyers were asked to represent two men held in the underground prison, so Abdu and a colleague were able to visit for the first time.

They were led underground by masked, heavily armed security guards, down a flight of dirty stairs into a room where the remains of dead insects dotted the floor. The toilet was so dirty it was in effect unusable.

Surveillance cameras on the walls violated the basic legal right to a confidential discussion, and guards warned that the meeting would be cut short if they talked about detainees’ families or the war in Gaza.

“I asked myself, if the conditions in the lawyers’ room are so humiliating – not just personally to us but also to the profession – then what is the situation for the prisoners?” Abdu said. “The answer came soon, when we met them.”

The clients were brought in bent over, with guards forcing their heads to the ground, and remained shackled at their hands and feet, she said.

Saja Misherqi Baransi, the second PCATI lawyer on the trip, said the two detainees had been in Rakefet for nine months, and the nurse began the meeting by asking: “Where am I and why am I here?” The guards had not told him the name of the prison.

Israeli judges who authorised the detention of the men at very brief video hearings, during which the detainees had no lawyer and did not hear evidence against them, said only that they would be there “until the war ends”.

The men described windowless cells with no ventilation, holding three or four detainees, and reported often feeling breathless and choking.

Prisoners told the lawyers they faced regular physical abuse including beatings, assaults by dogs with iron muzzles, and guards stepping on prisoners, in addition to being denied adequate medical care and given starvation-level rations. Israel’s high court ruled this month that the state was depriving Palestinian prisoners of adequate food.

They have very limited time outside the cell in a tiny underground enclosure, sometimes just five minutes every other day. Mattresses are taken away early in the morning, usually at about 4am, and only returned late at night, leaving detainees on iron frames in otherwise empty cells.

Their descriptions matched images from a televised visit to the prison made by Ben-Gvir to publicise his decision to reopen the underground jail. “This is terrorists’ natural place, under the ground,” he said.

He has repeatedly boasted about mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, rhetoric that former hostages taken during the 7 October attacks say prompted an escalation of Hamas abuse when they were in captivity.

This included holding hostages in underground tunnels for months, depriving them of food, isolating them from news of relatives and the outside world, and violence and psychological torture, including being ordered to dig a grave on camera.

Israel’s intelligence services have warned that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners puts the country’s wider security interests at risk.

Misherqi Baransi said the detained nurse last saw daylight on 21 January this year, when he was transferred to Rakefet, after a year passing through other jails including the military’s notorious Sde Teiman centre.

The nurse, a father of three, has had no news of his family since his detention. The only fragment of personal information lawyers can share with detainees from Gaza is the name of the relative who authorised them to take on the case.

“When I told him: ‘I talked to your mother and she authorised me to meet you,’ then I am giving him this tiny thing, at least telling him that his mother is alive,” Misherqi Baransi said.

When the other detainee asked Abdu if his pregnant wife had given birth safely, the guard immediately cut off the conversation to threaten him. As the guards took the men away, she heard the sound of an elevator, suggesting their cells were even deeper underground.

The teenager had told her: “You are the first person I have seen since my arrest,” and his last request to her was: “Please come see me again.” His lawyers were later informed he was released to Gaza on 13 October.

The IPS said in a statement that it “operates in accordance with the law and under the supervision of official comptrollers” and added that it “is not responsible for the legal process, classification of detainees, arrest policy, or arrests”.

The justice ministry referred questions about Rakefet and detainees to the Israeli military. The military referred questions to the IPS.

This article was amended on 8 November 2025. Information provided to the Guardian meant an earlier version suggested both Rakefet detainees represented by PCATI were still in Israeli custody. PCATI provided new information after publication to say one of them had been released under the October ceasefire agreement. (Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight. Also see Tucker Carlson criticizes US aid to Israel after ‘mass murder’ in Gaza.)

Foreign to the darkened minds and hardened hearts of the Israeli military and its political leaders, including judges, is the ineffable mercy of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who instructed us as follows in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy   44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you:  45 That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust.

 46 For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this?  47 And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this?  48 Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 43-48.)

The concept of mercy should not be foreign to the mind of the Israelis even though Our Lord spoke through the Prophet Osee as follows:

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice: and the knowledge of God more than holocausts.  7 But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant, there have they dealt treacherously against me.  8 Galaad is a city of workers of idols, supplanted with blood.  9 And like the jaws of highway robbers, they conspire with the priests who murder in the way those that pass out of Sichem: for they have wrought wickedness.  10 I have seen a horrible thing in the house of Israel: the fornications of Ephraim there: Israel is defiled. (Osee 6: 6-10.)

Our Lord spoke the following words through the Prophet Ezechiel to teach the Jews and us all that He would come to cleanse us of our impurities (Original Sin) and to turn stony hearts into hearts of flesh to build us up into in a new city, namely, true Zion, the Catholic Church:

And I have regarded my own holy name, which the house of Israel hath profaned among the nations to which they went in.  22 Therefore thou shalt say to the house of Israel: Thus saith the Lord God: It is not for your sake that I will do this, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake, which you have profaned among the nations whither you went.  23 And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the Gentiles, which you have profaned in the midst of them: that the Gentiles may know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord of hosts, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.  24 For I will take you from among the Gentiles, and will gather you together out of all the countries, and will bring you into your own land.  25 And I will pour upon you clean water, and you shall be cleansed from all your filthiness, and I will cleanse you from all your idols.

 26 And I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you a heart of flesh.  27 And I will put my spirit in the midst of you: and I will cause you to walk in my commandments, and to keep my judgments, and do them.  28 And you shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.  29 And I will save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for corn, and will multiply it, and will lay no famine upon you.  30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that you bear no more the reproach of famine among the nations.

 31 And you shall remember your wicked ways, and your doings that were not good: and your iniquities, and your wicked deeds shall displease you.  32 It is not for your sakes that I will do this, saith the Lord God, be it known to you: be confounded, and ashamed at your own ways, O house of Israel.  33 Thus saith the Lord God: In the day that I shall cleanse you from all your iniquities, and shall cause the cities to be inhabited, and shall repair the ruinous places,  34 And the desolate land shall be tilled, which before was waste in the sight of all that passed by,  35 They shall say: This land that was untilled is become as a garden of pleasure: and the cities that were abandoned, and desolate, and destroyed, are peopled and fenced.

 36 And the nations, that shall be left round about you, shall know that I the Lord have built up what was destroyed, and planted what was desolate, that I the Lord have spoken and done it.  37 Thus saith the Lord God: Moreover in this shall the house of Israel find me, that I will do it for them: I will multiply them as a flock of men,  38 As a holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts: so shall the waste cities be full of flocks of men: and they shall know that I am the Lord. (Ezechiel 36: 22-38.)

Sadly, the leaders of Israel—but not necessarily all of its people nor certainly all Jews, observant or not, in the rest of the world, are merciless towards their enemies, which is why some of the current Israeli government’s cabinet ministers have said that there are no innocent Palestinians and that they do not deserve to return to Gaza as a just punishment for their “collective guilt,” which is precisely what the term that the mass murdering occultist named Adolph Hitler and his henchmen used to refer to their rounding up of Jews and subjecting many to extermination under the full cover of the civil law. There is, you see, no difference between Hitler and many contemporary Israelis as Hitler believed that only Aryan blood was “pure” and many within the Israel government believe and act as only Jewish blood is “pure.”

Pope Pius XI rejected any claims of racial purity or superiority (take note, Nick Fuentes and those who follow him) in his condemnation of Nazism that is also a condemnation of how many Israeli leaders view Palestinians and how they have been subjected to a genocide that only paid Israeli propagandists can deny:

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community -- however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things -- whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.

None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xI, 15). (Pope Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, March 17, 1937.)  

As Catholics, my friends, we know that God does not judge us on the basis of the race or ethnicity. Our immortal souls are made unto His own very image and likeness in that we have a rational soul with an intellect to know Him and a will to choose with which to love and to serve Him. Human beings do not love God as "blacks" or as "whites" or as "Latinos or Latinas" or as "Orientals" or as "Native Americans" or as "Italians" or as "Croatians" or as "French" or as "Americans" but as creatures whose immortal souls have been redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Human beings are called upon to love God as He has revealed Himself to them through His true Church, the Catholic Church, and to love their own immortal souls as they have been redeemed at so great a cost. Our principal identity as human beings is as members of the Catholic Church. Everything else about us (race, ethnicity, nationality, gender), although occurring certainly within the Providence of God, is secondary.

As I tried to explain to students during my days as a college professor, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ embraced all of the legitimate joys and sorrows of this passing, mortal vale of tears as He underwent His fearful Passion and Death. We suffer or experience joy as human beings, as redeemed creatures, not as mere animals identifiable by external characteristics. There are no such things as "black" tears or "white" tears or "Indian" tears. There is no such thing as "white" joy or "black" joy" or "Latino" joy. The use of the "race" or "ethnicity" or "gender" card is the refuge of cowardly scoundrels who seek privilege and/or to indemnify slothful or corrupt behavior.

We are to see in each person the very impress of the Divine Redeemer and to treat Him accordingly, rendering unto each person that which is his due. We are to discriminate unjustly (we must discriminate justly in many circumstances of our lives as we choose which merchant to patronize, which person to employ, who to admit to a seat in a college or a professional school, to deny employment or privileges to those steeped in public scandal, etc.) against no one nor must we use the external characteristics of a human being to extend privileges that are undeserving and/or would result in an injustice to someone else.

Human beings are supposed to be bound together by the common bonds of the Catholic Faith, not to break into warring tribes along ethnic or racial or geographic lines, seething with hatred and resentment at those who have "more" (power, money, fame, prestige, accomplishment) than they do. We are to help each other get home to Heaven as members of the Catholic Church who aspire to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary for our sins, fulfilling these words of Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians as we seek to build up each other as members of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth: 

[16] From whom the whole body, being compacted and fitly joined together, by what every joint supplieth, according to the operation in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in charity. This then I say and testify in the Lord: That henceforward you walk not as also the Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, [18] Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts. [19] Who despairing, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, unto the working of all uncleanness, unto the working of all uncleanness, unto covetousness. [20] But you have not so learned Christ;

[21] If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus: [22] To put off, according to former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted according to the desire of error. [23] And be renewed in the spirit of your mind: [24] And put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth. [25] Wherefore putting away lying, speak; ye the truth every man with his neighbour; for we are members one of another.

[26] Be angry, and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your anger. [27] Give not place to the devil. [28] He that stole, let him now steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need. [29] Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth; but that which is good, to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers. [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption.

[31] Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamour, and blasphemy, be put away from you, with all malice. [32] And be ye kind one to another; merciful, forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you in Christ.  (Ephesians 4: 16-32.)

We are to be bound together by the common bonds of the Catholic Faith. We advocate Christ the King and deep devotion to His Most Blessed Mother, nothing else.

This is not “racist.”

Catholicism is the one and only true religion, and it alone provides us with the means of viewing all men as redeemed creatures and to treat them as we would treat Christ the King Himself in the very Flesh.

Men such as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald John Trump, who is proud that his daughter Ivanka converted to Talmudism when she married Jared Kushner, treat those they deem as enemies with disdain and contempt, and, caring not for the plight of the displaced Palestinians in Gaza, whose families have this in this historic area for centuries while others were forced to go their following their being displaced by the Zionists from their homes in Palestine by the Zionists in 1948 and thereafter, and seeing in the ruins of Gaza City a real estate opportunity to make it a playground for the rich and famous:

Trump administration reps have just revealed a grandiose $112 billion plan to rebuild war-torn Gaza into a futuristic international destination dubbed “Project Sunrise.”

The 10-year development plan, drafted by first son-in-law Jared Kushner, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, and two top White House aides, is currently courting investor countries with a 32-slide PowerPoint presentation detailing the bold plan to renovate burning rubble into beach resorts.

Gaza would see the development of luxury hotels, high speed rail and AI-optimized smart grid features that would revolutionize the small slice of the coveted Mediterranean coastline into a bustling metropolis, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Gaza’s destruction has been profound, but we believe what lies ahead is not just restoration — it’s a chance to develop a gateway of prosperity in the Middle East with state-of-the-art infrastructure, urban design, and technology,” the executive summary slide read, according to the outlet.

The total $112 billion cost would be spread out over 10 years, with the US agreeing to cover $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debts.

The ambitious proposal — developed within the last 45 days by Kushner, Witkoff, and White House aides consulted Israeli security experts about the path forward — further called for establishing a “Chief Digital Office and an innovation lab to define standards and guide policymaking.”

The presentation does not go into detail about which countries or companies would be investing in the rebuilding fund, according to WSJ.

Though the plan mapped out distinct phases of construction, it did not provide details for housing the 2 million Palestinians who would be displaced during the massive construction necessary.

There is an estimated 68 million tons of rubble in Gaza after thousands of Israeli airstrikes leveled cities during the two-year war in Gaza.

US officials who have knowledge of the proposal are skeptical that it will come to fruition because a condition would be Hamas agreeing to disarm, the Journal reported.

Witkoff, meanwhile, met Saturday in Miami with high-level delegations from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar to discuss implementation for the second phase of the Gaza cease-fire plan. (Kushner, Witkoff draft $112B proposal to develop Gaza into futuristic 'smart city': report.)

One wonders if there will be any place for Catholic churches in the playground for the rich and famous that Donald John Trump, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, and Benjamin Netanyahu desire to build, but in the meantime, though the Catholics (who have been a little too busy trying to survive to take note of the false nature of the conciliar church, whose false doctrines have validated Judaism even though its validity ended when Our Lord took His last breath and then gave His own people a thirty-seven year period of mercy before using the pagan Romans to chastise them) who remain in Gaza City are preparing for Christmas joy amidst the rubble in which they are now forced to live thanks to the Israeli Defense Force’s obliteration of the area:

Despite ongoing violations of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City is striving to prepare worthily for Christmas despite the post-apocalyptic devastation inflicted upon the Strip’s entire population by the U.S.-backed Israeli army.

“The world should know that there are over two million people here who have nothing and need everything,” emphasized Father Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest in the compound, in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

Though the October 10 ceasefire deal has significantly decreased the ongoing attacks of the Israeli military upon the small and densely populated region, the Gaza Health Ministry reported Wednesday that Israeli forces had killed 360 Palestinians and wounded 922 since this agreement was presumed to take effect.

Such strikes include Israeli warplanes bombing tents housing displaced Palestinian families yesterday in al-Mawasi, killing at least five people, including two children and wounding dozens.

Despite the dire situation, Romanelli told ACN the parish is doing its best to prepare to celebrate the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

“We are deciding what to organize and we have begun rehearsing choirs and dabkes – Palestinian group dances – and we may even hold a small show outside the walls of our compound, if conditions permit,” the priest said.

Romanelli hopes to be able to visit the sick and bring small gifts. These include those in the parish compound and very few who have ventured back to what is left of their homes.

The priest is reportedly doing his best to obtain chocolate “whatever the cost … (hoping) it will do everyone good” in building morale among the people.

After Israel’s imposing a permanent blockade on Gaza in 2007, the army has regularly restricted food imports, allowing only minimum calorie levels necessary for the population’s survival, and often banning “luxuries” such as chocolate, potato chips, fruits, children’s toys, wedding dresses and toilet paper.

Fortunately, with the October 10 ceasefire agreement having gone into effect, Fr. Romanelli said emergency supplies have been arriving more regularly.

“Since the fighting stopped, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has managed to send us important aid with which we have been able to help over 12,000 families,” he told ACN.

Residing in the Church’s compound are about 450 people, mostly Catholic and Orthodox, including more than 50 disabled individuals, among them, 30 Muslims.

It was due to these disabled and other elderly that Romanelli and other religious on site, including the Missionaries of Charity, refused to obey the Israeli army’s October 1 order to evacuate Gaza City or be “considered terrorists and terror supporters” subject to the “full force” of the Israeli military’s operations that were in the process of systematically destroying the entire city.

Since “trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence” for many of the disabled, the religious and clergy who have been attending to the vulnerable “decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds” despite the obvious risks to their lives.

According to the ACN report, around 60 people have managed to move out of the Holy Family Parish compound, with some returning to their homes despite many being damaged. However, these families still rely on the parish for drinking water and electricity to charge their mobile phones.

“Some have tried to clean their houses or what is left of them” Fr. Romanelli said, adding that heavy machinery is needed to clear the damage done by U.S.-backed Israeli bombings. He added that most water sanitation and electricity infrastructure that serves the civilian population was destroyed during these bombings.

“There is no sign of reconstruction, the lack of means causes suffering, and the lack of prospects leaves people agitated,” the priest lamented.

Romanelli became well-known as the recipient of a near daily call from Pope Francis after Israel’s ongoing genocidal response to the Hamas break-out attack of October 7, 2023.

Additionally, in July, the parish priest was injured, along with eight others, when the Israeli army directly struck the Holy Family Church compound with a tank shell, killing three.

This attack came just three days after a highly visible press conference conducted by Holy Land Christian prelates charging Israeli authorities with facilitating terrorist attacks by radical Jewish “settlers” against Christians and other Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The timing of the murderous attack upon Holy Family Parish reportedly caused Church authorities to consider the possibility that the strike was “a deliberate act of retaliation” for the prelates’ earlier press statement.

Despite so many harrowing difficulties experienced by the Christian and broader Palestinian communities in Gaza over the last 26 months, it is Fr. Romanelli’s desire that the Christmas season in this devastated region remain one of prayer and peace.

“We should pray. We should pray a lot – for peace, and for all the inhabitants of this Holy Land, be it Gaza, Palestine or Israel,” he concluded.

Updated reports on Wednesday from the Gaza Health Ministry confirm the deaths of 70,117 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, the majority of whom are women and children. They also state the number of injured has risen to 170,999, with many more trapped under rubble and inaccessible to rescue and civil defense teams.

Studies indicate the ministry’s death figures are most likely a significant undercount. (Catholic parish in ravaged Gaza Strip prepares for Christmas amid devastation.)

Even though Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will not be present sacramentally at Holy Family Church in Gaza City because of the invalidity of the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic Novus Ordo liturgical service, the faithful, though, will be edified by Christmas joy as their remember that no earthly even, no, not even Israel’s systematic destruction of their homes and the genocide against their friends and neighbors, must ever rob us of Christmas joy.

Pope Leo XIII gave us the antidote for the misery caused by sinful men who wreak havoc on others in full cooperation with the adversary’s temptation: Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His true Faith:

There is, nevertheless, some consolation for Us even in looking on these evils, and We may lift up Our heart in hope. For God “created all things that they might be: and He made the nations of the earth for health.”[3] But as all this world cannot be upheld but by His providence and divinity, so also men can only be healed by His power, of Whose goodness they were called from death to life. For Jesus Christ redeemed the human race once by the shedding of His blood, but the power of so great a work and gift is for all ages; “neither is there salvation in any other.”[4] Hence they who strive by the enforcement of law to extinguish the growing flame of lawless desire, strive indeed for justice; but let them know that they will labor with no result, or next to none, as long as they obstinately reject the power of the gospel and refuse the assistance of the Church. Thus will the evil alone be cured, by changing their ways, and returning back in their public and private life to Jesus Christ and Christianity. (Pope Leo XIII, Exeunte Iam Anno, December 25, 1888.)

“Neither is there salvation in any other.”

We must remember that Our Lord died to save the souls of all men, including that of Benjmain Netanyahu and all other Talmudists. Our Lord wants these mass murdering racialists to be converted, but how can they be converted unless we pray and make sacrifices for their conversion? It is our duty as sons and daughters of Holy Mother Church to pray for the conversion of all men to the true Faith as there is reason that today’s genocidal maniacs and egotists cannot become latter day Saint Pauls.

True, such conversion may appear unlikely to us in human terms, but with God all things are possible, are they not?

So, pray to Our Lady for those who kill, imprison, torture, and displace innocent human beings because their souls are held captive to the devil by Original Sin and by the heavy weight of their Actual Sins even though they are unaware of the fact that they have committed these sins, which serve as a cancer upon the souls for which the One they hate, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood to redeem.

It was in the midst of the terrible events of World War II that Pope Pius XII wrote the following about the joy and the hope of Christmas that transcends all the events of the world:

As the Holy Christmas Season comes round each year, the message of Jesus, Who is light in the midst of darkness, echoes once more from the Crib of Bethlehem in the ears of Christians and re-echoes in their hearts with an ever new freshness of joy and piety. It is a message which lights up with heavenly truth a world that is plunged in darkness by fatal errors. It infuses exuberant and trustful joy into mankind, torn by the anxiety of deep, bitter sorrow. It proclaims liberty to the sons of Adam, shackled with the chains of sin and guilt. It promises mercy, love, peace to the countless hosts of those in suffering and tribulation who see their happiness Shattered and their efforts broken in the tempestuous strife and hate of our stormy days.

The church bells, which announce this message in every continent, not only recall the gift which God made to mankind at the dawn of the Christian Era; they also announce and proclaim a consoling reality of the present, a reality which is eternally young, living and lifegiving; it is the reality of the “True Light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this World,” and which knows no setting. The Eternal Word, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, began His mission of saving and redeeming the human race by being born in the squalor of a stable and by thus ennobling and hallowing poverty.

He thus proclaimed and consecrated a message which is still, today, the Word of Eternal Life. That message can solve the most tortuous questions, unsolved and insoluble for those who bring to their investigations a mentality and an apparatus which are ephemeral and merely human; and those questions stand up, bleeding, imperiously demanding an answer, before the thought and the feeling of embittered and exasperated mankind.

The watchword “I have compassion on the multitude” is for Us a sacred trust which may not be abused; it remains strong, and impelling in all times and in all human situations, as it was the distinguishing mark of Jesus.

The Church would be untrue to herself, ceasing to be a mother, if she turned a deaf ear to her children’s anguished cries, which reach her from every class of the human family. She does not intend to take sides for any of the particular forms in which the several peoples and States strive to solve the gigantic problems of domestic order or international collaboration, as long as these forms conform to the law of God. But on the other hand, as the “Pillar and Ground of Truth” and guardian, by the will of God and the mandate of Christ, of the natural and supernatural order, the Church cannot renounce her right to proclaim to her sons and to the whole world the unchanging basic laws, saving them from every perversion, frustration, corruption, false interpretation and error. . . .

And where could you with greater assurance and trust and with more efficacious faith place this vow for the renewal of society than at the foot of the “Desired of all Nations” Who lies before us in the crib with all the charm of His sweet humanity as a Babe, but also in the dynamic attraction of His incipient mission as Redeemer? Where could this noble and holy crusade for the cleaning and renewal of society have a more significant consecration or find a more potent inspiration than at Bethlehem, where the new Adam appears in the adorable mystery of the Incarnation? For it is at His fountains of truth and grace that mankind should find the water of life if it is not to perish in the desert of this life; “Of His fullness we all have received.” His fullness of grace and truth grows as freely today as it has for twenty centuries on the world.

His light can overcome the darkness, the rays of His love can conquer the icy egoism which holds so many back from becoming great and conspicuous in their higher life. To you, crusader-volunteers of a distinguished new society, live up to the new call for moral and Christian rebirth, declare war on the darkness which comes from deserting God, of the coolness that comes from strife between brothers. It is a fight for the human race, which is gravely ill and must be healed in the name of conscience ennobled by Christianity.

May Our blessing and Our paternal good wishes and encouragement go with your generous enterprise, and may they remain with all those who do not shirk hard sacrifices — those weapons which are more potent than any steel to combat the evil from which society suffers. Over your crusade for a social, human and Christian ideal may there shine out as a consolation and an inspiration the star that stands over the Grotto of Bethlehem, the first and the perennial star of the Christian Era. From the sign of it every faithful heart drew, draws and ever will draw strength; “If armies in camp should stand against me, my heart shall not fear.” Where that star shines, there is Christ. “With Him for leader we shall not wander; through Him let us go to Him, that with the Child that is born today we may rejoice. (Pope Pius XII, Christmas Message, December 25. 1942.)

We rejoice on Christmas Day no matter our own personal circumstances and no matter the events transpiring in the world. As Pope Pius XII above:

His light can overcome the darkness, the rays of His love can conquer the icy egoism which holds so many back from becoming great and conspicuous in their higher life. (Pope Pius XII, Christmas Message, December 25. 1942.)

We must always rise above the events of the world, and we must always celebrate Christmas, the Octave of Christmas, and the entirety of the Christmas Season, which is impinged in this year’s liturgical calendar with the start of Septuagesima on Sunday, February 8, 2026, and, indeed, throughout the course of our entire lives.

Christmas joy must the keynote of our lives at all times, especially in times of pain, suffering, and tragedy.

Yes, we rejoice on Christmas Day and always because we are, through no merits of our own, members of the true Church and have been given a Most Blessed Mother Who desires that we supplicate her now in the manger as she kneels before her Infant Son and as she stands so valiantly at the foot of her Divine Son’s Most Holy Cross in every offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Every Rosary we pray can help to plant the seeds for the conversion of men and the world from this cause or that cause to the only cause that matters, the Catholic cause to seek the sanctification and salvation of all men who have been given a Redeemer to adore, obey, and love now and for all eternity in Heaven so that all men will exclaim now and for all eternity in Heaven:

“Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.”

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.