Pax Christi's leadership is concerned that Israel's actions violate international law and must stop.

"It is very encouraging to witness the faith of the community of Christians living in that enclosed space and also in the midst of a huge Muslim community majority," said Cardinal Nichols.

The ancient Christian population of Bethlehem is fast disappearing. One of the few remaining Palestinian Christians explains what it feels like to celebrate Christmas there today.

Escalating violence between Israel and Palestine has left at least 213 Palestinians and 12 people in Israel dead since the outbreak of hostilities on May 11. In 2014, we spoke to Israeli Jesuit Father David Neuhaus on the more than six decades of conflict in the Holy Land.

Currently, if anything about Christianity is taught, it is about the Crusades and the Inquisition. There is no teaching of comparative religion.

Tensions between Jews and Christians and Muslims in Israel-Palestine and the Middle East more generally, as well as violent Christian-Muslim clashes in Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeria in recent months, to say nothing of the war with Iraq, have led to some disturbing stereotyping of the Islami