Palestine - Missionary trip to a Holy – and battered - Land.

02 June 2017

(ANS - Bethlehem) - Bethlehem, "the City of Bread"; and then Nazareth, the city of Mary. In the two cities, so charged with value and meaning for every Christian, the Salesians have a long history of service, education, and proximity to the local population.

In the "City of Bread", the Salesians have a bakery. The Sons of Don Bosco arrived in Bethlehem in 1891, sent by Don Michele Rua, at the request of Don Antonio Belloni, a diocesan priest who worked in Bethlehem with young people in the manner of Don Bosco. When the Salesians came to Don Belloni, he too became Salesian, with great humility, and entrusted the orphanage he had built to the Congregation.

To save on the cost of meals, they built a small oven which benefited the guests of the orphanage, and the Salesian community and school that followed.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a period marked by some of the worst Palestinian and Israeli clashes, the oven was crucial: curfew meant starvation to the locals. The Salesians decided to produce much more bread than they needed for their own use, and began distributing it clandestinely. Providentially, just as flour became scarce on them too, the political climate improved and supplies replenished.

A result of that period was that the Salesians were able to draw up and keep a list of needy households which are given a supply of bread free of charge, or for a nominal fee: they represent a third of their customers, who are, however, extremely numerous, the bakery having become Bethlehem's most renowned thanks to the involvement of various master bakers who have taught them how to produce different types of bread, and thanks also to the help of the Salesian Mission Procurement that has enabled them to renew the equipment for baking bread.

Now the furnace is a proud feature of the Salesian presence in Bethlehem, which also has a vocational school and an oratory.

In Nazareth, instead, the Salesians run a school with about 500 students - mostly Muslims - from primary to high school, with different areas of study.

The quality of the education on offer is widely acknowledged throughout Galilee, with enrollment requests being always much greater than available places; its graduate students can hope to enter the most prestigious national and European technical universities.

"It is moving to hear the testimony of young people, especially Muslims, who define Don Bosco as their 'father, master and friend'," says Don Giampietro Pettenon, President of Don Bosco's Missioni of Turin.

For more information visit the webiste: "Missioni Don Bosco"

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ANS - “Agenzia iNfo Salesiana” is a on-line almost daily publication, the communication agency of the Salesian Congregation enrolled in the Press Register of the Tibunal of Rome as n 153/2007.

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