Gaza Catholic school reopens, welcoming 1,000 students

Holy Family School in Gaza City reopened Sept. 15 for about 1,000 students, serving families from Holy Family Catholic Parish and the wider community, according to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). 

Before the war, five Christian schools operated in Gaza — three Catholic, one Orthodox, and one Evangelical — and Christian pupils attended different schools across the territory. 

George Akroush, director of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem’s Project Development Office, told ACN that around 130 Christian pupils, about 13% of the student body, would attend Holy Family School. Most of the school’s students are Muslim.

“For the first time, all Christian students in Gaza will be studying together in one Christian school,” Akroush told an ACN delegation visiting the region. “This creates a strong sense of community and shows that the Church remains close to them, accompanying them in the midst of all they are going through.”

Before reopening, the school sheltered more than 450 people displaced by Israeli bombardment, according to ACN. Holy Family parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli said staff worked to make the school a place where children could feel safe amid the destruction in Gaza.

“For the students and the families, reopening the school will bring some sense of normality. We have worked hard to ensure that it is a safe environment,” Father Romanelli told ACN. “There is almost nowhere in Gaza that has not been destroyed; destruction is all around. But we have worked hard to make the school a clean environment, where the children, who have been through so much, can feel safe.”

Father Romanelli said “the needs in Gaza are enormous.” The parish hopes to offer families some sense of normality, he said, “even though nothing is normal in Gaza.” After Sunday Mass, he takes parishioners to a beach in Gaza City for recreation, despite the rubble there.

The school will also provide support for children and teachers affected by the war.

“Many of the teachers are so traumatized, and it is almost as if they are not the same people who we knew before the start of the war,” Father Romanelli told ACN.

He said the school has added special psychosocial support to its program and plans to offer activities after classes. Children have asked him to keep the school open because they have nowhere else to go, he said. 

“Everyone in Gaza is carrying so much trauma,” the parish priest told ACN, adding, “For me, the school is a light in the darkness. It means a lot to people. When they see the 1,000 students coming in their uniforms to the school, it shows them that there is a future.”

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