ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Catholics rallied against Zionism, but due to internal divisions within the Church, never reached a common political platform. The newly appointed Bishop in Jerusalem, Rennie MacInnes, also settled in Cairo. Jaussen arrived in Jerusalem in 1890 while still a student: a popular system to avoid military service that was compulsory for every single French male citizen residing in France. The summer of 1915 proved to be hard for the Custody as Italy joined the war against the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman authorities ordered that all clerics of Italian nationality, mostly Franciscans, should leave Jerusalem. The Catholic Church, in order to break this monopoly, allowed those ‘Christian’ Kingdoms – starting with France – who obtained, through the Capitulations, commercial advantages to grant ‘protection’ over the Catholics of the empire. In order to historicise Catholics in Palestine, we need a brief historical background to better understand the modern period.
