date: 19.09.2015.
Mr. Rateb Jacob Rabie, the President of the Christian Ecumenical Community came to Medjugorje for a pilgrimage. Our journalists had chance to talk to him on our radio Mir Medjugorje. He is a Christian from Palestine, born in Jordan, as his parents were forced to leave Jerusalem in 1948. This is what he shared about his life: „I studied in the United States, where I live now with my wife an four children. 17 years ago, I decided to leave my job, so I would help Christians in the Holy Land and I founded Christian Ecumenical Community Holy Land, so we would preserve the presence of Palestinian Christians in Holy Land. Ever since then, that is my mission, my life: to preserve the roots of the Christianity for all, not just for Arabic Christians, but for all of the Christians throughout the world, since this all began in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth, the famous towns from the Holy Bible. I only have four employed people in the United States and there are 25 full time employees in the Holy Land, and 20 who work part time. We have projects where we are repairing houses to the Christian population and the additional 25 people are involved in that, so we take care of 100 families in total.” Mr. Rateb said that this is his second time here: “I feel really rested here, as I can feel presence of Our Lady, Her protection around us. She is here and I feel that. I am here from another reason – to connect Medjugorje and Holy Land, as we plan to have embassy for Holy Land here in Medjugorje. After my first visit here, I decided to take action I met some people and I saw all things I can do. I still work on various projects, but we came to the point when we realised that we need to make a move. Now, we are beginning to see the project as a complete and connected picture and we would like to serve dear people who are members of the church. Sometimes, many feel that the church without people is just useless. Here people come for few days and I wondered before why do they come, what do they do…now I know they come here to pray. That is so good and we would like them to put their faith into action now, to start helping Christians in the Holy Land, not because they need help, they do not need food to survive, but they need international support from the Catholics so their faith would remain alive.”
