RelatedIsrael. Ethnicity and religion, a complex issue.

Palestine (State of Palestine or Palestinian National Authority, PNA) is a state with limited recognition, largely under Israeli occupation. Its claimed territories are the West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem (including the Old City), both conquered by Jordan in 1948, with the founding of Israel, and the Gaza Strip, occupied by Egypt. During the Six-Day War (1967), Israel then seized all these areas, whose sovereignty was subsequently relinquished by both Jordan and Egypt in favor of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).

The population of all of Palestine totals more than 5 million, of which about 3 million live in the West Bank and the rest in the Gaza Strip (where the majority of the population is made up of refugees from all of historic Palestine).

The head of state is de jure President Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, but the sharp and bloody divisions between the paramilitary Fatah movement, which he presides over together with the PLO (exponent of secular-based Arab nationalism) and Hamas, in power in Gaza after the 2007 elections, two years after the Israeli withdrawal from the Strip, have led to a de facto division not only geographically, but also politically, economically and socially between the two Palestinian territories.

The areas where Palestinian control is effective in the West Bank are called A (security control by Palestinians) and B (civilian control) and cover most of the western part, although they are crossed and interrupted in their territorial continuity by Jewish settlements, by roads under full Israeli control. A separation wall divides the West Bank from Israel, while the latter has full control in Area C, to the east, towards the Dead Sea and the Jordanian border. Area A constitutes 18% of the region, B 22% and C 60%. More than 99% of Area C is closed to Palestinians. Some 330,000 Israelis live in this area in settlements considered illegal by the UN and most foreign countries. 

The city of Jerusalem is fully controlled by Israel, although in the eastern part of the city, 60% of the population is Palestinian (permanent residents and non-citizens of Israel). 

Instead, the entire Gaza Strip is under Hamas control.

This status was reached following the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, mediated by Bill Clinton's United States.

These agreements stipulated, on the Palestinian side, the "rejection of all violence and terrorism" and the recognition of the State of Israel within the 1967 borders, while, on the Israeli side, the recognition of the PLO as "representative of the Palestinian people".

The Oslo Accords provided for a five-year transitional period for the transfer of certain powers and responsibilities from Israel to the PNA, which culminated in further final negotiations interrupted by the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000.

From 2003 to 2005, the Israeli government initiated and completed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which raised considerable tensions in Israel (given the dismantling of several settlements and the transfer of settlers there) but also within the PNA, due to the conflict that broke out between Fatah and Hamas (an Islamic fundamentalist movement that does not accept the Oslo Accords and seeks the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state governed by sharia law throughout the Holy Land). As a result of this conflict, since 2007 Hamas controls the Gaza Strip (where it obtained the majority of votes in the 2006 legislative elections) and Fatah the West Bank.

The Gaza Strip, on the other hand, although internally controlled by Hamas, has been subject to a naval blockade since 2006 (although fishing is allowed), and a land and partial air blockade. The transit of goods by land is regulated at the border crossings (on both the Israeli and Egyptian sides) and it is Israel that supplies water and electricity (and can interrupt the supply).

Ethnicity and religion in Palestine

The vast majority of the population of Palestine (93%) is Sunni Muslim. Although there is a strong Christian minority (6% of the population), freedom of worship, especially in Gaza under Hamas rule, is limited.

Christians are members of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem (Catholics), the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (the majority), the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem and various other Eastern Catholic (such as the Maronite) and Orthodox Churches, or Protestant Churches.

In addition to the Druze, also present in Palestine, there exists near Nablus (ancient Sichem) a community of Samaritans (a Jewish sect already famous in the Gospels for being hated by the wider Jewish-Rabbinic community) which has its center of worship on Mount Garizim, on the outskirts of the city.

Christians in Gaza

In the world, Christians of Palestinian origin number more than one million, but in the Gaza Strip they number only 3,000 (before 2006 they were at least twice as many), that is, 0.7% of the population. About 90% belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, with Catholic (there is only one Catholic parish in the Strip, the Church of the Holy Family in the al-Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City) and Baptist minorities.

With the rise of Hamas, the situation has become critical for local Christians, both because the small community is not protected from attacks by fundamentalist Muslims and because of the escalation, especially since 2008, of the conflict with Israel and the closure of the Strip by the Jewish state, which has increased the influence of fundamentalist movements on the young citizens of Gaza.

Nevertheless, all the Christian Churches are on the front line to help the mostly Muslim population in the daily difficulties caused by the Israeli blockade, which translate into widespread poverty and child malnutrition, bombing damage and ineffective health care.

The number of Christians in the Strip is constantly decreasing, first of all because of the Israeli blockade that prevents the import and export of most goods (except through the tunnels built and controlled by Hamas that pass under the border with Egypt and are used to smuggle goods and weapons, as we have unfortunately seen lately), but also because of the difficulty of freely professing one's faith.

In the West Bank

In the West Bank, 8% of the population is Christian. This figure includes East Jerusalem, which, however, was unilaterally annexed by Israel with a law passed by the Knesset in 1980.

The life of Christians in the West Bank is certainly much simpler than in Gaza: here it is possible for them to have their own places of worship, often clearly visible and part of the Palestinian landscape, and to freely celebrate their religious holidays.

There are neighborhoods and entire cities with a high percentage of Christian population (for example, Bethlehem, where the mayor is also a Christian), villages with a Christian majority (Beit-Sahour, near Bethlehem) or even totally Christian: this is the case of Taybeh, a village of 1,000 inhabitants. This is the case of Taybeh, a small village of 1,500 inhabitants not far from Jerusalem and Ramallah (it is the ancient Ephraim mentioned in the Gospels, where Jesus is said to have spent a few days before going to Jerusalem for the last Passover), famous for the production of the best-selling Palestinian beer, called Taybeh.

Palestinian Christians are very well integrated into the local social fabric. Most of them, in fact, consider themselves Palestinians or Arabs first, and only then Christians.

Although acts of discrimination or violence do occur, they are fairly isolated and, in any case, stigmatized by politicians and much of the Muslim population.

Christians no longer play a prominent role in Palestinian resistance movements (they had done so in the past, however, as mentioned in previous articles on the rise of Arab nationalism), but they continue to wield great economic power and exert considerable social and political influence. Also in Palestine, as in Israel, the role of Christians is predominant in education and research, with more than 70 Christian schools, mostly Catholic, attended mostly by Muslim students. Christians also have a higher level of education than the national average in Palestine, as well as a much higher employment rate.

Christians in the Holy Land: a presence in danger

Lately, the deep gap between the Christian presence in the West Bank and that in Gaza has widened considerably, although it certainly cannot be said that Christians in the West Bank are not an endangered minority.

In fact, in recent decades there has been a massive emigration of Christians from the Palestinian territories, and not only because of the community's vulnerability to the growing hostility of some fundamentalist Muslim fringes. 

In fact, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank have aggravated an economic crisis that the pandemic and the consequent absence of pilgrims, the source of livelihood for a considerable percentage of the Palestinian Christian population, have made even worse. Many Christians also suffer from a lack of freedom and security, in part due to the corruption of Palestinian institutions and political instability.

Most choose to emigrate to Jordan, the Gulf States, the United States, Canada and some European countries.

It must also be said that the emigration rate among Christians is higher than that of the Islamic population, as Christians generally belong to the urban middle class, who are also more likely to emigrate due to their higher level of education and language skills. International Christian organizations also offer assistance in leaving Palestine.

All of this, coupled with the significantly lower birth rate of Christians compared to their Muslim fellow citizens, puts the Christian presence in the Holy Land (both in the PNA and in Israel) at risk in the present and especially in the future. In fact, demographic data show that the Christian population was already declining during the British Mandate period, but with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this trend has intensified even further.

In recent years, the escalation of the conflict and, above all, the focus of the political authorities on both sides on the narrative of the conflict from a religious point of view, has worsened the situation, turning Christians into victims of resentment, discrimination and vandalism, both on Jewish and Islamic grounds, and in fact aggravating a situation that was already difficult to deal with.

In order to improve the situation of Christians, but also that of all peoples throughout the Holy Land, Jewish and Muslim religious fundamentalism, which is detrimental to all parties involved, must be ended as soon as possible.

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The chalice will not pass until Jesus drinks it all. Once the capital sentence pronounced by Pilate has been heard, some Roman soldiers take a stick and some ropes to tie it in the arms of this condemned Jew who would expire as soon as possible on the nearby mound of Calvary.

Both Jews and Romans used to carry out their executions outside the city walls, but the next day would be Saturday and the soldiers knew that nothing worked in Judea on Saturdays. They had to hurry. Even if the death of a man who performed real public miracles was carried out, no one would touch the Sabbath.

Moreover, according to John's Gospel, that year the feast of the Passover coincided with the Sabbath, so that it further enhanced the solemnity and holiness of the following day.

Towards the wedding

Jesus leaves the praetorium and the city, carrying a horizontal pole on his back. As was the custom then, the vertical pole of the cross would have been found beforehand nailed to the ground at the site of the torture, even though the four Gospels speak of a "cross" (in the original Greek, stauros) carried by the Lord on his way of the cross.

The data diverge with respect to what happened along the short road that separates the praetorium from the summit of Calvary. We have basically five sources: the four evangelists and the tradition of the Church. Matthew and Mark are in substantial agreement that the only thing that happened was that, on leaving the praetorium, the soldiers forced a Cyrenian named Simon to carry Jesus' cross to a place called "Golgotha". They even give the impression that Jesus did not carry his cross on the road at all, for lack of suitable physical conditions or for whatever reason.

Instead, Luke speaks of a relatively long encounter and dialogue of the Lord with the daughters of Jerusalem, in which they weep for him and, rather than consoling, they are consoled by Jesus. Also according to Luke, the two thieves who would be crucified with Christ accompany him on this same journey. John, on the other hand, with only one verse, explains that Jesus carried his own cross throughout the Way of the Cross, without making any mention of Simon of Cyrene or of weeping women. The Gospel account of this significant episode in the life of Christ is that brief.

Tradition adds a few more episodes: a very intense look between Jesus and his mother, the gesture of Veronica, who wipes the Lord's face with a veil, and three falls of Jesus as he carries the cross.

This complementarity between what is related in Sacred Scripture and what is provided by Sacred Tradition made the Pope St. John Paul II, in 1991, proposed an alternative version of the traditional Stations of the Cross.called "Biblical Way of the Cross" because its fourteen stations are directly inspired by passages from the Bible. This clarifies the contributions of both contributions.

The wedding party

Curiously enough, no evangelist says how Jesus was crucified. The artistic works that we know of disagree not only on the position of the feet (whether they were side by side or overlapping), but also on what Jesus was wearing at the time, who was at the foot of the cross, or what exactly happened while He hung on the tree.

It seems that the narration of the bloody action of the crucifixion is avoided, perhaps to spare the Christian reader the displeasure of the crudeness of the details.

In fact, only in John 20:25 The holes left by the nails in the hands of the risen Christ, in the face of the obstinate unbelief of the apostle Thomas, are spoken of. Only the sacramental context of the Holy Eucharist will offer the disciples a more delicate and supernatural way to deal with this trauma.

About the feet of the crucified Christ nothing is really said in the sources. Regarding his clothing, it is only said that he was stripped of his clothes, without any garment remaining on him; something that the Christian iconography will arrange without great compromise.

As for his companies, in addition to the two evildoers already mentioned, Luke, as we have seen, speaks of "a great multitude of the people and of women" (Lk 23:27) who followed him, later called "acquaintances of Jesus" and "women who had followed him from Galilee" (Lk 23:49). There were also the Roman soldiers with their centurion and the Jewish leaders.

Instead, Matthew and Mark tell us of several soldiers with the centurion, two thieves, some passers-by who reviled the Lord, the chief priests, scribes and above all many women, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James and Joseph) and Salome (the mother of the sons of Zebedee).

Finally, John tells us that there were many Jews, chief priests, soldiers and above all Mary of Nazareth (the mother of Jesus), the sister of Mary of Nazareth called Mary of Clopas, Mary Magdalene and himself, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. In fact, if the Cyrenian stayed at Calvary to contemplate the spectacle, we have no news; apparently he brought the cross and then left.

As can be seen, the concordances are the majority, and the recourse to different testimonies has allowed the evangelists to gather new data for each version of these events. In fact, the inscription placed on the cross has a different content according to each of the four evangelical voices.

According to Matthew it said: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews". On the other hand, Mark reduces the phrase: "The King of the Jews". Luke reports something similar: "This is the King of the Jews". However, John reports something a little longer: "Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews", and notes that it was written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek, the three languages used in Judea at that time.

In the context of the preparation for the death of the Messiah, the fourth evangelist is the only one who devotes special attention to the clothing of Christ. However much has been said about the supposed richness of the Lord's seamless robe, the most serious historical research indicates that it was not necessarily an expensive garment just because it was seamless. Such a garment was common in Palestine at the time.

The hagiographer emphasizes this to highlight the exact fulfillment of Ps. 22:19 ("they divide my garments and cast lots for my tunic"), where the tunic is not divided, but cast lots, and to symbolize the indivisibility of the Church, since the tunic was the garment worn directly on the skin, in very close contact with the Body of Christ, which is the Church.

Everything is prepared. That was the environment. But why did all this happen? And above all, why have these events surprised so many people and continue to surprise us today? It is almost unbelievable that a man who healed, preached love to enemies and lived soberly would come to such a violent end.

The well-known Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann is of the opinion that the execution of Christ was due to a misinterpretation of his work as political agitation; that is, he attributes the condemnation more to the Romans than to the Jews. Perhaps Bultmann has focused too much on the account of the passion, and too little on the rest of the Gospel, on all those events that led Jesus' situation to that extreme.

In any case, another possible explanation, which avoids the dichotomies Jew-Roman, religious-political, blasphemy-crime, is the one that sees the condemnation as a positive will of God the Father for his Son after the fall of Adam.

In this sense, the Old Testament offers us more interpretative clues than the New Testament. With the theologian Marius Reiser we can ask ourselves: "In fact, no one expected that the Messiah would end up on a cross. Or is it possible that the respective allusions in Sacred Scripture had been ignored until that time?

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This first article focuses on religious diversity in what we know today as Israel.

In this land, with a Jewish majority, the Christian religious presence is represented in various denominations and alongside them, Muslim communities.

Before the creation of the State

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the vast majority (just under 80%) of the population of the Palestinian region was Muslim. However, Christians were a sizeable minority (about 16%) and were present mostly in Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Nazareth, where they constituted more than half (if not the majority, as in Bethlehem and Nazareth) of the inhabitants.

Before the beginning of mass emigration from Europe, with the advent of Zionism (we have talked about it in other articles) Jews were instead only 4.8% of the citizens, concentrated in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed, and there was an even smaller Druze presence.

Until the end of World War I, the region of Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire, a state founded on a religious rather than an ethnic basis: the Sultan was also "prince of the believers", therefore caliph of the Muslims of any ethnicity (Arabs, Turks, Kurds, etc.), who were considered first-class citizens, while Christians of the various confessions (Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Catholics and others) and Jews were subject to a special regime, that of the millet which provided for any non-Muslim religious community to be recognized as a "nation" within the empire, but with an inferior legal status (according to the Islamic principle of dhimma). Christians and Jews, therefore, did not participate in city government, paid exemption from military service through a capitation tax (jizya) and a land tax (kharaj), and the head of each community was its religious leader. Bishops and patriarchs, for example, were thus civil officials immediately subject to the sultan.

The creation of the State (1948): Israel as an ethnic democracy

The Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha, in an article entitled "The model of ethnic democracy: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." (in Nations and Nationalism, 2002) calls Israel an "ethnic democracy".

It is a concept that refers to a democratic form of government, in which one ethno-religious group (Jews are, in fact, an ethno-religious group) predominates over others, although all citizens enjoy full civil and political rights, regardless of their ethnic and religious affiliation, and can participate in political life and the legislative process.

In this, an ethnic democracy differs from an ethnocracy or a "Herrenvolk democracy", in which, on the other hand, only one ethnic group enjoys full political rights (e.g. South Africa under the apartheid regime, which is why it is not correct to speak of apartheid in Israeli society, since the separation between ethnic groups is not imposed by law, but is usually a choice of each ethnic and religious group).

Sammy Smooha identifies eight steps necessary for the formation of an ethnic democracy:

1. The identification of the founding values of the state with those of the predominant ethnic group.

2. The identification of the ethnic group with citizenship by the State.

3. The State is controlled by the predominant ethnic group.

4. The State is one of the main mobilizing forces of the ethnic group.

5. There is difficulty, or impossibility, for those who are not part of the predominant ethnic group to obtain and enjoy full civil rights.

6. The state allows ethnic minority groups to form parliamentary and extra-parliamentary organizations that become very active.

7. The State perceives these groups as threats.

8. The State imposes forms of control on these groups.

In the same work, Smooha also identifies ten conditions that can lead to the founding of an ethnic democracy:

- The predominant ethnic group constitutes a solid numerical majority.

- The predominant ethnic group is the numerically largest ethnic group, although it is not the majority.

- The predominant ethnic group has strong ties to democracy (e.g., it is the group that founded it).

- The predominant ethnic group is an indigenous group.

- Ethnic minorities are allochthonous.

- Ethnic minority groups are fragmented into many groups.

- The predominant ethnic group has undergone a diaspora phenomenon.

- There is some involvement on the part of the countries of origin of the ethnic groups.

- There is international interest in the matter.

- There was a transition from a non-democratic regime.

Presence of religions in Israel

These conditions are almost entirely found in the State of Israel, where Jews, the dominant ethnic group, constitute 73.6% of the population (although 65% of Jews describe themselves as non-religious and 8% as atheists, making it the eighth least religious country in the world).

The Israeli Arabs (descendants of Palestinians who in 1948 decided to stay on their land and live in the newly founded Jewish State) are 21.1% and 5.3% belong to other ethnic groups.

The Arabs living in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, unlike those living in the rest of the country, are permanent residents (they do not have Israeli citizenship, but may apply for it). Although de jure fully integrated into the democratic fabric of the state, the Arab minority suffers from various social and economic hardships.

The personal status of citizens continues to be governed by the system of millet The Ottoman system, according to which jurisdiction over certain disciplines, especially marriage and divorce, is vested in the respective religious denomination (every Israeli must declare to which denomination/ethnicity he/she belongs and, until 2005, this information was included in the identity card). In Israel, for example, there are no civil marriages and the State recognizes marriages performed by recognized religious authorities (Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze).

The Israeli Jews are not a monolithic bloc; on the contrary, there is great diversity within the community. Muslims, on the other hand, represent about 19% of the population and are almost all Sunni.

In addition to the Druze (an ethno-religious group whose doctrine is a derivation of Shiite Islam and is strongly integrated into Israeli society, to the point that its citizens perform military service, from which Muslims and Christians who do not request it are excluded), 2.1% of Israelis (161,000 people) are Christians.

Christians in Israel

Israel's Christians are mostly Greek Catholic (Melkites) and Greek Orthodox, but there is also a considerable minority of Roman Rite Christians (about 20,000 people). In smaller numbers are Maronites, Syriacs, Copts and Armenians.

Although there are about 127,000 Christian Arabs (present mainly in Nazareth, Haifa, various towns and cities of Galilee and Jerusalem), there is also a minority of 25.000 Slavic Christians (also Orthodox) and several thousand Messianic Jews (Jews who have converted to Christianity but continue to profess themselves Jews), belonging above all to the Pentecostal reality, but of whom there is also a small number of converts to the Catholic Church, for whom, in addition to the numerous Catholic immigrants in the country, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has created the Vicariate of Santiago for Hebrew-speaking Catholics and that of emigrants and asylum seekers.

The Roman Catholic Church in Israel, in particular, is administered by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalemwhich also has jurisdiction in the Palestinian National Authority, Jordan and Cyprus, and which has under its custody, in addition to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre (shared with the Armenians, Copts, Syriacs and Greek Orthodox), the Co-Cathedral of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, in Jerusalem, the basilicas of the Dormition of Mary, St. Anna and St. Stephen in Jerusalem, the basilica of Stella Maris on Mount Carmel in Haifa, the basilica of Emmaus on Mount Carmel in Haifa, and the basilica of the Holy Sepulcher on Mount Carmel in Jerusalem. Anna and St. Stephen in Jerusalem, the Basilica Stella Maris on Mount Carmel in Haifa, and the Basilica of Emmaus.

Traditionally, and long before the restoration of the Latin Patriarchate in the Holy Land (1847), the Catholic presence has been safeguarded by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, which has overseen and administered most of the Catholic Christian holy places in the Holy Land since 1217.

Some facts about Christianity in Israel

According to the data provided by the Pew Research Center The population in Israel is distributed as follows:

1. Most Christian Israelis are ethnically Arab.

2. From a political point of view, Christian Israelis share with Muslims the view that Israel cannot be a true democracy and a Jewish state at the same time, and are against Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Israel's excessive closeness to the United States.

3. Israeli Christians tend to be less observant than Muslims but, in percentage terms, more so than Jews.

4. Christian Israelis tend to live separately, and with few relations, with Arabs of other religions and with Jews (they disapprove of mixed marriages).

5. As a factor of identity, certain practices are very common among Israelis of Christian confession, such as baptism, the presence of images or sacred objects in the home or to wear, fasting during Lent, etc.

Christians in Israel and education

Israel's Christians, according to the Maariv newspaper and data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, constitute "the most successful in the country's educational system."

If one takes into account, in fact, the data recorded over the years, the Christian Arabs are the ones who have obtained the best results, in the field of education, compared to any other group in Israel, and not only because they are the creators and managers of excellent primary and secondary schools, universities and special centers for the treatment and accompaniment of disadvantaged minors and in problematic conditions (famous is the one in Nazareth).

In terms of education, in fact, the number of Arab students who have obtained a bachelor's degree in recent years is 64%, compared to 48% for Muslims, 55% for Druze and 59% for Jews.

If we then look at university degrees, 56% of Christian Arabs earn a degree, compared to 50% of Jewish students, 36% of Druze and 34% of Muslims.

In general, Christians are well regarded by Jews and constitute a kind of national glue, although they are increasingly squeezed between two larger groups (Jews and Muslims), in sharp decline and victims, in recent years, of numerous acts of vandalism and discrimination by fringes of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, galvanized by politically questionable figures such as Itamar Ben Gvir of the Otzmah Yisraeli Otzmah Yisrael party, of numerous acts of vandalism and discrimination by fringes of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, galvanized by politically questionable figures, such as Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Otzmah Yehudit party, often accused, for his extremist and Kahanist positions, of inciting hatred against Arabs.

In the current context of dramatic instability, therefore, Arab Christians, concentrated mainly in the north of the country, are at greater risk if one considers the northern front (Lebanon and Hezbollah: it must be said that missiles from southern Lebanon often hit villages with Arab-Muslim and Arab-Christian populations, claiming victims within these religious groups).

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Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada was born in Avila in 1515, in a large and pious family. The historical context of her childhood is epic: the Reconquest has just ended, there is war in Flanders, expeditions to America, literature of chivalry. Teresa is impregnated with this magnanimity, and plays at being a hermit, a martyr to the Moors, or a lady courted in great love affairs.

Orphaned at the age of 13, she asked Our Lady to adopt her, even though she was still a child. "very much an enemy of being a nun". But the Augustinian boarding school where he was educated would gradually weaken his worldliness and lead to the appearance of a religious vocation, which resulted in his entry into La Encarnación in 1535.

Shortly afterwards, she became seriously ill. She will recover, and this weakness will remain as a constant reminder of the ephemerality of the world and the absolute need for God. In spite of this, years of spiritual lukewarmness will pass, within a tremendously relaxed religious environment.

Teresa's "conversion

In Lent 1554, with 19 years of religious life behind her, Teresa discovered a wounded Christ and received a strong gift of tears before the love of God, which changed her life.

His relationship with God is revolutionized: "A feeling of God's presence came upon me at all hours, and I could in no way doubt that he was within me, or that I was all wrapped up in him". He receives many visions and mystical experiences that push his tension towards holiness.

In addition, the desire to renew religious life, which he perceived as too comfortable, was born, an intuition that matured over the years and led to the foundation of new Carmelites and the reform of the Barefoot Carmelites.

Amidst many hostilities, he created the first Carmel of St. Joseph in Avila itself in 1562. She associated St. John of the Cross and many other saints and spiritual masters to the new Order as a true mother.

His works

His experience is the source of all his spiritual teaching, which is not little. His human warmth and his wit oblige anyone interested in his lessons to approach his spiritual notes, his poems, a very abundant collection of letters that demonstrates the network of friendships he was able to weave. And, of course, there is a major triptych of works that mark the history of Christian spirituality and Hispanic culture.

Chronologically, the first is The book of lifeas we have known it since its first edition in 1562, or The book of mercies, as Teresa herself called it. Written at the request of her confessor, it is a classic in its own right, where she proposes for the first time her personal theology of prayer. The Saint is fascinating on this point: her own life becomes a theology of the mystery of God and of Christian existence, for the benefit of all. Here she presents prayer as an experience of friendship with God, as the central Christian experience. Paraphrasing Vatican II, we could say that he discovers the universal vocation of all Christians to prayer.

Next comes Road to perfectionThe book was published in 1566, dedicated to the first group of nuns of the new Carmel of Avila. We are before a propaedeutic manual to the spiritual life in all its dimensions, from the ascetic to the mystic. Numerous interesting elements appear here: the spiritual value of fraternity and relationships, of humility and poverty, the progress of prayer, and the missionary scope of the prayer of believers.

Finally, Teresa's masterpiece is Inner castle, o The purple onesas it is commonly known. Written in 1577, it is a masterly deepening of the spiritual path of the believer, starting from the symbol of the castle and a structure of progressively interior rooms leading to the throne room. "in the depths of the soul" where dwells the King, the Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

Throughout these spiritual halls, life in the Spirit evolves: first, passing through more ascetic phases until the mystical phases of spiritual stillness.

In the last Moradas, holiness is outlined: spiritual marriage, mystical union with God in mutual self-giving. Bernini, in his Ecstasy Roman, left us a priceless interpretation of this experience of passion and docility to an unknown Love.

Returning from the foundation of Burgos, she stopped in Alba de Tormes. Ill, literally exhausted by a life of dedication, she died in 1582. "In the end, I die as a daughter of the Church." she says relieved after a mission that has been very much contradicted, especially by her own family. "It is high time, my Husband, that we met."She warns that the perfection of the Christian life, which is love, is also fulfilled for her.

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We chatted with Alejandro Monteverde, director of the film, and Javier Godino, who plays Jorge, a Colombian policeman, in Madrid. Sound of Freedom, a film that addresses the terrible reality of underage sex trafficking arrives at Spanish box offices, thanks to a contracorriente films after being the No. 1 independent film in the United States.

Despite not being endorsed by the big industry, this brave film, starring Jim Caviezel ("The Passion of the Christ"), Mira Sorvino ("Mighty Aphrodite"), Eduardo Verástegui: and Javier Godino has surpassed $150 million in its first three weeks of theatrical release. 

Sound of Freedom,(Sound of Freedom) tells the story of Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who gave up everything to fight against child trafficking. Through a moving and, at the same time, horrifying story, the viewer enters into this terrible scourge but with the light of hope to make, with this film, a turning point in the collective and personal awareness of this reality. 

Alejandro, how did Tim Ballard's story come to your attention? 

-I had been writing a fiction about this issue of child trafficking for about three months. At that time, the producer (Eduardo Verástegui) asked me if I wanted to meet Tim Ballard. I looked for information about him and realized he was an expert on the subject, who had worked for the federal government. I thought it would be great to talk to him as part of the research, but when I met him, I realized that his life surpassed the fiction I had been writing for three months. We made a change of route and started writing his life as a screenplay.

As a director, what made you take that step? 

-What struck me most was what made him leave his children to go rescue other people's children. To leave your family, your job, your economic security..., everything, to go to rescue children who are not Americans. In the USA there is a lot of patriotism and I admire it. Ballard is an American agent, of the government and his first mission was to rescue Colombian children, or rather, children in Colombia from all over Latin America, Central America and South America. 

In addition to this, I was very struck by how he began to bring together this group, of various nationalities, for example, with the character Jorge, played by Javier Godino. 

Ballard once told me that children should have no nationality. That is, they should be protected, literally, by the whole world. If a child is raped in Haiti it should be the responsibility of the whole world; that protection is for the whales, but not for the children? For Ballard, children are the heart of the world and if we don't protect the heart, we can go into cardiac arrest.

To manage this Sound of Freedom has touched you internally?

-Yes, I think so for me and for all of us who worked on the film. It's a very complex subject that we have avoided for a long time. It's not something new, historically we have been in this darkness for a long time. 

The simple fact of shining a light on this darkness and creating a space to start a social conversation already begins to change you. But more than anything else, I am impressed by the number of victims who open up after seeing the film. It has happened to me in every presentation that at least one or two victims feel the confidence to share their story with me. I always tell them, "I'd like to help you, but I'm not a psychologist, not an expert on the subject... But I do appreciate that you have the courage to tell it, to talk about it. If this film inspired you to do that, go for it. The latter, this conversation, is a job that I don't do, it has to be done in community. 

How do you make a film about such a tough subject that you can watch without fear?

-For me, child abuse is a problem that is not a problem of one country, nor of one age. It is a situation that we all have to take action against. So how do you make a film about such a strong subject that the whole family can see? The answer, in my opinion, is that it is cinema. Cinema can be enjoyed if the film uses poetic elements to describe a darkness, without you having to see something that you will later regret having seen. 

Was it difficult not to fall into "exhibitionism"?

- [Alejandro Monteverde] It was an intense process. First, about the script: It's cheaper to fix a scene on paper than on film. First we started testing the script, making it as descriptive as we could: Those scenes where the curtain closes, we stand outside "waiting", and you hear the dogs barking... Some of them came back to me. It was two years of working on the script and, once they worked on paper, we went to shoot. 

Also while shooting there were moments that were very strong in camera and I would say "Stop, let's change this", a camera adjustment, a position..., because we were very conscious of that thin line, that we should not cross. 

- [Javier Godino] The journey is internal within the viewer. It is as in Shark Spielberg, you are afraid of a shark of which you only see a fin..., you imagine it. It is the spectator who makes the internal journey.

Sound of Freedom provokes tears in more than one viewer. Did you cry while watching the movie?

- [Javier Godino] I did. I saw it recently, once it was finished. We made this film in 2018 and, watching it, there are touching moments, others very hard. We are at a time when many of us know victims of abuse and it stirred a lot of things inside me. I had that inner journey I was talking about before. But I also had tears of hope with that "Do you hear this? It's the sound of freedom."At that moment I got excited. That is cinema. 

Why did it take so long to get this project off the ground?

- [Alejandro Monteverde] It was a combination of factors. The first is the challenge of selling this film to the audience. This was the biggest challenge for distributors, when they heard the subject matter. Cinema was already in a slump before the pandemic. I remember reading an article at the time in which Spielberg talked about how movies were going to become a Broadway experience, something you do once or twice a year, at most. The movies that were coming into theaters were huge movies, independent cinema was disappearing....  

Thinking out loud, I don't remember another independent film that has been this successful since the movie business started going down. If people were going to pay $15 to see a movie they wanted a $200 million production, not a $2 million film.... 

I hope this film will be a watershed, that it will show that there is an audience for independent films...

- [Javier Godino] ...and for these tough topics.  

Javier, your character is an "air of hope" in a contrary atmosphere. How have you experienced playing Jorge? 

- [Javier Godino] With a lot of responsibility. 

Telling the story of a policeman who manages to move a whole police machinery in Colombia to rescue these children is something I have lived with a lot of responsibility and with a lot of gratitude, too. 

I've done many darker characters: rapists, murderers..., and it hurts a lot to do those characters because, somehow, it gets a little "stuck" in your body. People look at you through that prism. 

Suddenly, playing the hero, it's beautiful! It's equally hard, because in filmmaking you put your emotions on the line all the time and for three months you have to sustain those emotions and those images that the film brings. 

I live it with joy and seeing the success I think how good it is that we are achieving a dialogue in society! It is true that we are at a time when many abuses are being uncovered, abuses ..... We have to keep talking about it and we have to clean up a lot. 

How do you think it will be received in Spain?

- [Javier Godino] I think the public will recommend it because it is a film in which you see a reality, but you see it well, with hope. I think it will be a success.