Fr CARLO GIUSEPPE ADESSO Diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro - lecturer in Church History Bethlehem is very important for our faith, it is also very important for the faith of the Church. If you think about it, the faith of the Church rests, in reference to the Holy Land, on three very specific places. First of all, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. It contains precisely the physical place where the Lord died and rose again, the crucifixion, death and resurrection. Then we have the Upper Room where Christ anticipated his sacrifice in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Then we have Bethlehem, this place. This place is very important because it shows that here the Lord became one of us. St Athanasius, a great fourth-century Church father, says that the son of God became like us in order to make us like Him, a bit like what we normally sing. But it is St Augustine who has a very beautiful phrase, very appropriate for this place. St Augustine says: ‘Could there be greater mercy towards us unfortunates than that which induced the Creator of Heaven to descend from Heaven and the Creator of Earth to put on a mortal body?’. Bethlehem demonstrates that our faith is not based on an idea, it is not based on a theory, it is not even based on a book, but our faith is based on a Person. On a concrete event that we can therefore touch. By touching it we can see, by seeing it and by touching it we can believe, strengthen our faith. Bethlehem is fundamental to our faith. The Popes and Bethlehem Bethlehem in the course of recent history has been visited by four popes. First of all in 1964, the epochal visit of Pope Paul VI. Epochal because he was the first Pope after St Peter to set foot in the Holy Land and in particular here in Bethlehem. A particularly dear visit, that of Paul VI, because he came here on the occasion of the Epiphany of the year 1964. He even celebrated Holy Mass at the altar of the Magi inside the Grotto of the Nativity. So a moment of great intensity on the part of Pope Paul VI. Then, we come to the year 2000, it was the turn of Pope John Paul II. In the middle of the Holy Year, specifically from 20 to 26 March, he wanted to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. After him, nine years later, we are in 2009, it was the turn of Benedict XVI. Pictures are still preserved of Benedict XVI devoutly gathered in the Grotto of the Nativity. And finally in 2014, from 24 to 26 May, Pope Francis also paid a short visit. The last three pontiffs, unlike Paul VI, celebrated Holy Mass with a large crowd in Manger Square, the square from which we started our journey. In the next chapter ‘St Catherine's Church - Liturgy and Devotion and Pious Exercises’. Read More