Conservation and promotion of archaeological sites and sanctuaries, support for the study of early Christianity and biblical researches, guardianship of the archive and museum patrimony, publishing.

All our activities have always relied on the generosity and charity of the universal Christian community and on the contributions of friends and supporters.

Since the time when Pope Clement VI, with his bull of 1342, entrusted to the Franciscans the custosship of “the Holy Sepulchre of the Lord, the Holy Cenacle and the other Holy Places across the sea”, the Custody of the Holy Land has devoted itself, in the name of all of Christendom, to recovering and caring for the Holy Places of our Redemption. This “ancient” task and the Franciscans’ love for this Land translates into care, into the passionate study and propagation of what the stones that confirm the presence of the Lord Jesus tell us, but not only this.

The Holy Places administered by the Custody are a testimony of devotion, of faith and labour, the goal of pilgrimag on the part of the faithful who come here from all over the world, kept alive by the Franciscans in prayer, so that no pilgrim returns home without having been touched by the Grace that every Sanctuary contains and dispenses.

These Places and their patrimony of culture and memory, so precious for the whole of Christianity that they were defined by Paul VI as “The Fifth Gospel”, require constant maintenance and upkeep.

 

“The task of the Custody is a great grace, which Providence has entrusted to us. But the tension is always that of wondering about the person of Jesus. For these places must draw us back to Him. Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jerusalem invite us to prayer, but they also invite us to wonder about that Jesus who walked here, about the Church that in these places celebrates and records every time a particular moment of his life.”*