Judith Sudilovsky

"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.