The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem established the Pastoral Office in 2017. The office, which is composed of a director and a secretary, looks after the different aspects of pastoral work in the diocese, turning each need into a feasible and executable project and plan. It also supervises the project’s executive stages, in cooperation with the Presbyteral Council and the rest of the parish priests. A “Pastoral Committee”, which meets once a month, has been appointed to assist the Pastoral Office. It is composed of 15 members: priests, religious men and women, laypeople, as well as representatives of parishes, institutions and the different communities of the Holy Land.
Activities and projects :
- The Journey of Christian Families
During the first meetings of the committee, a number of necessary questions were raised as possible topics to be addressed. Due to the changes that families have been undergoing for several decades, the issue of the family was finally selected first, following a voting process conducted by the Pastoral Council, in coordination with the pastoral priests. The committee decided to organize a confession for the families of the diocese, around five themes imagined by the pastoral committee: 1) Relationships between partners; 2) Relationships with children; 3) Relationships with others; 4) Solutions to overcome obstacles, and 5) The mission of the Christian family at home, in the church and in society
The goal of this project is also to accompany families after marriage. For this reason, each parish has created a group of five to ten families. In addition to this, regular conferences and meetings are organized (once a week or once every two weeks), functioning in a participative way, that is to say with discussions and interactive exchanges between the participants, under the supervision of counselors selected specifically for this purpose.
The purpose of these meetings is to look at reality according to the word of God in order to arrive at practical conclusions in the field of family life.
- In the footsteps of Jesus
The Pastoral Office has also created an educational game called "In the Footsteps of Jesus", which is inspired by the Holy Scriptures. The game, which is suitable for all family members, children and adults alike, traces the life of Jesus in the Holy Land from his birth to his death, resurrection and ascension, including the places where the key events of his life took place. Based on the living character of the Holy Scriptures, the game allows the family to deepen its knowledge of the subject by discovering the holy places of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, the Judean desert, the Dead Sea, the south of the Jordan, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum in Galilee, Lake Tiberias and Caesarea in the Mediterranean.
