Since chef Fadi Kattan was a child getting underfoot in his grandmother’s kitchen, the preparation and communal eating of the burbara pudding has been a pre-Christmas symbol of the coming of the holiday on the Palestinian West Bank.

Patriarch Sabbah: “When you celebrate Christmas, remember that in Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, life is not a Christmas life. It is not the blessed life of the new redeemed humanity. The song of the Angels is far away.”

The Vatican issued a statement insisting that it is “absolutely necessary to reactivate direct dialogue” between Israelis and Palestinians “to achieve a two-state solution.”

The United States has dithered on establishing any policy to help bring an end to a conflict now in its eighth decade.

“Violence is also in the language, in the political decisions, in the conditions of life under which the Gaza population has been living many years.”

What’s going on in the Holy Land—and what’s at the root of the problem? Why should Catholics care?