Inside a Bombed-Out Sanctuary: Life, Fear and Faith in Gaza City’s Holy Family Compound
The courtyard smells of dust and boiled coffee. Children — some with visible scars, some who rock back and forth with the silent tremor of shock — press against the cool stone walls of a church that has become a lifeline. This is Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City: a shelter, a hospital, a parish, and for 450 people right now, the only home they know.
“People are scared. Everybody is scared, we are all scared,” Father Carlos Ferrero tells me over a line that cracks with distance and grief. He speaks from the center of the compound, where stray bullets have been found as close as the schoolroom and where, he says, the sisters’ home has been bombed three times. “The two ladies were killed last time, December 2023, by the sniper.”
A sanctuary under siege
When a church becomes a refuge rather than a house of worship, the plaintive rituals of daily life take on a different cadence. The eucharist is offered between roll calls. Confessions happen in whispered clusters while medics stitch a wound nearby. The sacraments are administered like medicine — as essential as water for those who can still make sense of prayer in the rubble.
Inside the compound are disabled children, elderly men who cannot walk, and people whose bodies and minds are marked by trauma. “Some of them have lost their mind,” Father Ferrero says, “and some, due to their age, are bedridden and others are sick.” He explains why he and the nuns have decided to stay: “We intend to remain in Gaza city… for those people.”
The church’s role here is less a choice than a moral imperative. “These are people who cannot go anywhere by themselves,” he adds. “We assist them.”
The numbers that matter
Numbers can blur the human detail; still, they frame the scale of the crisis. Father Ferrero said roughly 250,000 people have been ordered to leave Gaza City by Israeli forces — a staggering evacuation that, by his accounting, left as many as one million people behind in the densely packed urban landscape.
Globally, the Gaza Strip is home to roughly 2.3 million people, depending on the figures you consult — a small territory at immense density, where the difference between a home and a hospital can be a matter of inches. When orders to move come in a conflict zone that many describe as “nowhere is safe,” the calculus for families is terrifyingly simple: move and risk the unknown, or stay and face the immediate danger.
Fear, faith and perseverance
In the compound’s small chapel, a nun I met — Sister Miriam, who asked that her surname not be used for safety reasons — adjusted a blanket around an old woman who sleeps through the day and cries through the night. “We will not abandon them,” she said. “We promised when we took our vows to be present in good times and in terrible times.”
For Father Ferrero, the answer to what sustains him is elemental. “God, of course,” he says, without hesitation. “Jesus.” But his faith is layered with a steady moral clarity: people, he says, “don’t question God; they question human beings.” It’s an observation that rings like an indictment.
There’s something quiet and jaw-clenching in the way the faithful persist. “There are millions of people who are praying for peace,” he told me. “That’s kind of a moral miracle all over the world.”
Close calls and hard decisions
When stray bullets puncture a schoolroom wall or when a bomb collapses the roof of a sister’s house, the decisions people make are not strategic but desperately practical. Where will the elderly go? How will a family carry an oxygen tank through a checkpoint? Who will care for a child who cannot walk?
“We have young nurses who try to help; there are volunteers,” said Layla, a woman who fled a northern neighborhood and now cooks for those sheltering at the church. “But food is not enough — people need stability, and there’s no guarantee of that.”
Aid organizations have repeatedly warned that faith institutions have become de facto first responders across Gaza. “When hospitals are overwhelmed and roads are dangerous, churches, mosques and schools become the last line of civilian protection,” said Dr. Miriam Al-Khalidi, a humanitarian affairs analyst with experience in the region. “They shelter those who cannot move and offer crucial continuity of care.”
Services on the front line
- Spiritual care: Masses, prayers, and sacraments to sustain morale.
- Basic medical assistance: Wound care, basic medications, and palliative care for the sick and elderly.
- Food and shelter coordination: Rations, water distribution, and makeshift bedding.
- Psychosocial support: Volunteers trying to comfort children and adults suffering trauma.
These acts of care are not charity in the blink-box sense. They are lifelines. “We serve because nobody else can come in right now,” Sister Miriam said, her voice small but firm.
When diplomacy becomes personal
Global actors, too, surface in the conversation. Father Ferrero said the pope has been in touch and that the papal nuncio in Israel and the patriarch are communicating with the church directly. “He is very much concerned,” the priest told me. Those gestures matter not because they change the battlefield but because they remind people that the world is watching — and, sometimes, that watching can turn into pressure or, at least, attention that nudges aid and advocacy.
“We need more than statements,” Dr. Al-Khalidi warned. “We need corridors for aid, guarantees for civilian protection, and accountability for violations of international law.”
Small gestures, enormous courage
There are scenes you won’t see in briefings: an old man humming hymns while a child sprinkles water from a plastic jug; a volunteer mother braiding hair to give a girl a moment of dignity; a medic offering a cigarette to a man who cannot sleep. Those small acts — of grooming, of tending, of conversation — are how people keep ordinary life alive amid extraordinary danger.
“When there is a bomb very near here, things are falling down in our compound, so we have to be careful from everywhere,” Father Ferrero said. That carefulness is not simply about safety; it’s about preserving the fragile humanity of those inside.
What do we owe each other?
As you read this from a different continent, ask yourself: what is the value of presence? What does it mean to risk everything to stay? Faith communities across Gaza have made a pragmatic, sacrificial choice — to remain present with those who cannot move. Their story challenges our assumptions about neutrality and action in conflict zones.
Will global attention translate into safer passage, more aid, and legal protections? Will the images of frightened children and bombed roofs move policy makers to act? Or will the daily courage of places like Holy Family Church become another footnote in the fog of war?
Father Ferrero speaks not with rhetoric but with the kind of plainness reserved for those who have seen too much. “Persevering,” he says, is the only way forward. “Let God help us, but not going against God, but saying human beings can do bad things.”
He, the nuns, the cooks and volunteers, and the 450 souls sheltering beneath those battered walls remind us that in the worst of times, ordinary acts of care and stubborn faith can create unexpected sanctuaries. They also remind us that the world’s response — from emergency aid to diplomatic pressure — will determine whether those sanctuaries survive.
What will we do with the knowledge of their struggle? Will we look away, or will we lend our voice, our policy influence, our compassion? The question is not abstract. It is the measure of shared humanity.
