Referring to Jesus Christ’s birthplace, now in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Most Rev Justin Welby said: “The skies of Bethlehem are full of fear rather than angels and glory.”
He compared the time of Jesus’s birth with the modern-day plight of children in the troubled region. The Archbishop also spoke of children in Britain having to “hide their Jewishness on their way to school” in fear of the “age-old atrocious sin of anti-Semitism”.
Mr Welby, at Canterbury Cathedral, said: “Today a crying child is in a manger somewhere in the world, nobody willing or able to help his parents or her parents who so desperately need shelter.
“Or perhaps lying in an incubator, in a hospital low on electricity, like the Anglican al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, surrounded by suffering and death. Maybe the newborn lies in a house that still bears the marks of the horrors of October 7, with family members killed, and a mother who counted her life as lost.
“Or maybe they’re not a newborn, but someone thinking of next term, having again to hide their Jewishness on their way to school in this country, or a playgroup in our own cities, fearful of the age-old atrocious sin of anti-Semitism.”
Referring to Ukraine, Sudan and South Sudan, he said: “Around the world, we are beset with violence.”
