Patriarch's plea on behalf of the Holy Land

The most senior Catholic leader in the Middle East has said that the future of the Church in the Holy Land is now in doubt unless fellow Christians around the world step up efforts to help them.

Speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Patriarch Fouad Twal stressed that emigration had drastically reduced the numbers of Christians in both Israel and Palestine. The Patriarch said that the faithful in Jerusalem were expected to fall from 10,000 today to little more than 5,000 in 2016. He also said that in the Holy Land as a whole, Christians had declined from 10 percent to two percent within 60 years although other evidence shows the decline to be even more severe.

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