The newly elected Muslim mayor of Nazareth wants the Feast of the Annunciation to be proclaimed a civic holiday in Nazareth.
“Since the Qur'an speaks a lot of the Virgin Mary and as this feast has become a national holiday in Lebanon,” Mayor Ali Sallam told representatives of religious communities in the city on 17 March, “why not declare it as a holiday for the city of Nazareth, where the event of the Annunciation happened?”
The Catholic auxiliary in Jerusalem and Patriarchal Vicar for Israel, Bishop Giacinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, was at the gathering and joined representatives of the delegations present – Christians, Muslims and Druze of Galilee – to applaud the statement and undertake to support it.
Two thirds of the population of Nazareth, which is known as the Arab capital of Israel, is Muslim while almost one third are Christian.
Above: The Grotto at Nazareth's Basilica of the Annunciation. Photo: NicolaePina Israele
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