Judith Sudilovsky

Run by Sr. Maria David Magbanua, St. Rachel Center offers a safe alternative for parents from the refugee and migrant community, whose children are often looked after in overcrowded, unregulated day cares in Israel.

Salvatorian Sr. Hildegard Enzenhofer worked as administrator of Beit Emmaus Home for the elderly and disabled in the Palestinian village of Qubeibeh, nestled between Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank. 

"I have a very beautiful and good community and school staff, and when you have that around you to lead you and protect you, you feel you are in safe surroundings," says Indian-born Salvatorian Sr. Suneela Polimetla.

"It was an image that will be very difficult to erase." Mother María del Pilar Llerena Vargas recalls the pain of watching the funeral of Christians killed in a blast at a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza.

On April 19, the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, a fight started out of desperation in the district of the German-occupied Polish capital where Nazis forced the Jewish population to live in unlivable conditions.

Despite the ever-present tensions, Our Lady of Sion Sr. Kasia Kowalska believes she has found her place as a conduit of dialogue within both the Jewish and Palestinian communities in the Holy Land.

"It is a great sufferance to see suddenly empty all this beautiful paradise," said Sr. Telesphora Pavlou.

The Rosary Sisters' School in Gaza prepared for alternative distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they had not prepared for the possibility of an electricity shortage.

The collective, supported by several Catholic charities — including the Pontifical Mission, the Comboni Sisters, Spanish Manos Unidas and a parish in Switzerland, has been providing a source of income and support for Israel's most vulnerable population of African women asylum-seekers, and its work has become even more critical during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The wall and military towers loom above the convent on all three sides, including over the kindergarten playground, which has been covered by a fireproof roof because of the Molotov cocktails thrown over the wall by Palestinian demonstrators during clashes with Israeli soldiers.