Hours after June 12 overnight strikes by Israel on nuclear and military sites in Iran — described by Israel as “preemptive” and sparking fears of a wider regional conflict amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war — OSV News spoke with Jesuit Father John Paul, rector of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute, located on a 40-acre hilltop campus between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
The institute was initiated by St. Paul VI, and entrusted by him to the University of Notre Dame. The school evacuated its students in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel.
Opened in 1972, Tantur remains committed to fostering both ecumenical and interfaith encounter. Although its international programming has been suspended amid the war, both Palestinian and Israeli staff continue to serve, and the institute hosts local programs.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OSV News: Israel has declared a state of emergency in anticipation of Iran’s expected retaliation. What does that mean for you at Tantur?
Father Paul: The (Israeli) government has been telling the people to expect retaliations. … What’s in place right now is that all the schools are shut down, work is shut down, except for essential workers. Any gathering of groups in an outdoor area or larger gathering of groups inside is also restricted. So it’s all things to really keep people close to shelters and to protect the general public.
What it means specifically for Tantur itself is that, obviously, with the checkpoints also closed and the borders closed, workers are not able to come to work. It’s one of the side effects of this whole situation, the economic impact that this has on people.
OSV News: Are you afraid that, as a number of analysts have indicated, there is a possibility this will escalate into a wider regional conflict?
Father Paul: I think everyone here — Palestinian, Israeli, internationals that are here, different organizations that are here — is very worried and concerned about the possibilities of this becoming a much larger regional conflict.
Am I afraid? Not really.
OSV News: Would you say that’s because of your faith and your relationship with Christ?
Father Paul: Yes, yes. But I also think, too, that Tantur is in Jerusalem, and in many ways, Jerusalem has been spared a great deal by the conflict that has been going on here, because it is really a holy city. And so it has been much more of a safe and secure area.
And so it causes me not to be so afraid because the sirens will go off, people will go to shelters, and yet we also know we’re not the main targets. Could that change in the future? Yes, it could.
I would also say, too, that faith and trust in the Lord is also one of the things that’s also very present in my own thinking and prayer.
And I’m also not afraid because so many of the other local people, Palestinians and some of my good Israeli friends, live with this real sense of, “You know, we may be taken out, but we’ve survived. People here will continue to survive.”
People have lived through such hardships and such intense conflicts over the past 150 years, actually over the past thousands of years, and people have endured. … Their cultures have been able to continue.
OSV News: Is that sense born of any kind of cynicism or feelings of powerlessness, or is it because of a faith in something greater at work here?
Father Paul: I think it’s more of this deep-down thing that I could maybe summarize in some of the words of (St.) Paul: “Whether I live or die, I live and die in Christ” (Rom 14:8).
That is life, that hope. And so I think there is such a deep level of faith that is here, that it really keeps people going. It’s just the sense of, “How do I keep Christ at the center of my life, knowing that it will carry me into the life after life here on earth?” So I think it is a deep-seated sense of faith.
And I think what’s also operative, at least from my perspective, (is that) the churches here always celebrate the saints that have gone before us and especially the martyrs, with a real sense that they struggled through times of persecution, times of war, times of destruction, and yet the faith remains alive. The people remain alive.
So I think that’s really deeply ingrained in the hearts and the thinking and the spirits of people here. I think that’s also part of why, (when) at times I do worry, I just say, “Am I really afraid?” Not at a really deep level; maybe at a superficial level.
For me, what really becomes more important is, how do I be present to others who are really struggling with a deep sense of fear and a deep sense of frustration over this whole situation? How do I be present to and try to assist (them) through what I say, how I relate to people in terms of what they struggle with day by day, just trying to get by? Just the economic devastation that it caused in so much of the Holy Land, Israeli, Palestinian, the very church monasteries here (is significant).
OSV News: But even for people of faith, who have spiritual strength to draw on, war and conflict are incredibly wearying. Do you see signs of fatigue among those you know there, and in general?
Father Paul: I think the level of frustration and anxiety is very high across the board. The whole thing is so complex. Everyone suffers in this whole situation.
It wears down the spirit; it wears down so many people, (who say), “I know that I have to do something. I have to be a person of hope, but it’s hard to live with hope when you really don’t see evidence of an end in sight with all of this, and … realize it continues, it goes on and on.”
In the Mass readings for the Roman Rite yesterday (June 12) I was grabbed by the one line in 2 Corinthians, which talks about how the god of this age has blinded and closed the minds and the ears of the people and the leaders to the words and the presence of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 4:4). … This god is wreaking havoc, and not our God, with a capital “G.” You can look back at the false gods that guided, or (rather) misguided, us over the centuries. What god are we listening to, especially when the destruction continues, when the devastation and the loss of human life and human suffering and starvation (continue)? That’s what’s heart-wrenching.
One of the things I’ve learned, especially dealing with some of our young Jesuits in formation, is that so much of formation is undoing behaviors and ways of thinking that have been entrenched over many, many years. And it takes a long time and a lot of work to undo so much.
And it’s taken so long for human hearts and human minds to be closed and blinded and resistant … we just trust that the Spirit continually works at (his) own pace to undo so much of that. It’s just trusting that the Spirit is at work.
And what also keeps me going day by day is dear old (14th-century English mystic) Julian of Norwich: “In the end, all will be well. All manner of things will be well.”
A very good friend of mine put a little addendum on it — “And if it isn’t, it isn’t the end.”
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News.
