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H.E. Ambassador Michèle Burke Bowe, Head of the Representative Office of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the State of Palestine and President of the Holy Family Hospital of Bethlehem Foundation, delivered the keynote address at the Fifth Day of Melitense Formation held in Bologna on 11 April 2026 by the Delegation of Eastern Emilia-Romagna of the Italian Association of the Order of Malta. Speaking to an audience of Knights, Dames and volunteers, the Ambassador presented an unflinching account of the present condition of Bethlehem and of the work carried out by the Order’s flagship hospital — “un motivo di orgoglio per tutti i membri dell’Ordine di Malta” — and traced the line that connects the Holy Family Hospital, only 1,500 steps from the manger where Christ was born, to the Hospitaller foundation laid by Blessed Gerard nine centuries ago in Jerusalem.

A hospital that belongs to every member of the Order

The Ambassador recalled that the Holy Family Hospital, re-opened in 1990 by Grand Master Fra’ Andrew Bertie at the request of Pope Saint John Paul II and converted into a maternity and paediatric hospital, is the only purpose-built medical facility owned by the Grand Magistry: it does not belong to any single national association, but “to every single member of the Order of Malta”. Since 1990 the Hospital has assisted more than 112,000 births; it serves a catchment area of over one million people regardless of religion, employs an entirely Palestinian medical staff under a French chief executive (220 people in total, 71% of whom are women and 21% refugees, mirroring a patient population of which 50% are themselves refugees), and operates the only Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the area, capable of saving babies born before the 34th week of gestation.

In a typical year the Hospital assists nearly 4,000 deliveries and provides over 150,000 services to mothers, neonates and small children. Its Mobile Medical Unit brings care daily to desert and isolated communities; its free clinics for gestational diabetes and menopause — the latter unique in Palestine — sustain women throughout the life cycle. Prenatal, postnatal and paediatric clinics are subsidised at 85%, because the previous 50% co-payment had become unsustainable for families forced to choose between a medical visit and the weekly groceries.

A faithful witness in extraordinary times

Ambassador Bowe spoke with particular gravity of the conditions following the renewed escalation of October 2023: NICU admissions are up 33%, deliveries of premature and underweight babies have risen sharply, and the Hospital has put back in place its emergency protocols of 12-hour shifts, three-month stocks of medicines and disposables, 750 cubic metres of stored water and twelve days of generator fuel. The Foundation’s Poverty Reduction Programme, set up jointly with the Catholic Parish of Bethlehem, now distributes food, pharmaceutical and electricity vouchers to over 2,250 individuals every month, and supports the future of the local community through nineteen scholarships in nursing and midwifery and seven medical-school scholarships.

Quoting Pope Leo XIV and the Latin Patriarch, the Ambassador placed her testimony at the service of the appeal for the survival of the Christian presence in the Holy Land. Operating “on roughly six million dollars a year — the cost of twelve American NICU babies”, the Hospital, she said, ensures that “a child born in poor Bethlehem has the same prospects of life as a child born in wealthy Santa Monica”.

How Bologna fits into the Embassy’s outreach

The Bologna address is part of a deliberate cycle of public engagements through which the Representative Office in Ramallah carries out a core function of its mandate: making the work of the Order of Malta in Palestine visible, credible and supported within the wider community of the Order, the Catholic Church and the broader donor world. Each public address by the Ambassador — whether in the form of a Magistral seminar, a meeting of an Association, a conference of European Bishops or an academic forum — is an act of humanitarian diplomacy: it converts first-hand knowledge of the territory into informed solidarity, into vocations to volunteer, into donations that keep open the wards of the Hospital, the Mar Youssef clinic in Gaza City and the Mobile Medical Unit in the West Bank.

Within this framework, the Eastern Emilia-Romagna Giornata di Formazione — addressed to those who, by their profession of charity, are the closest collaborators of the Ambassador’s mission — was a natural and important station. The Ambassador’s intervention strengthens the bridge between the Embassy in Ramallah, the Italian Association of the Order, the Holy Family Hospital of Bethlehem Foundation and the global network of associations and benefactors that, together, make the Order’s Palestinian engagement possible.

Looking ahead

The Representation will continue this outreach calendar through 2026 and 2027, in close coordination with the Italian Association of the Order, the national associations of Europe and North America, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Holy Family Hospital of Bethlehem Foundation, with a particular focus on Bethlehem, on Gaza and on the joint cooperation programmes with the Palestinian International Cooperation Agency (PICA). In the closing words of the Ambassador’s Bologna address: “By being kind to the city known as the cradle of hope, you are helping hope itself to be born again.”