The Palestinian national football squad takes on a team of visiting Catholic priests (yellow T-shirts) from Italy in a friendly match at the Al-Khader Stadium outside the West Bank biblical town of Bethlehem. The priests may have been hoping for a miracle when they took on the Palestinian national football team in Bethlehem but they lost 9-1 in a rout of biblical proportions (AFP/Musa al-Shaer)

No Bethlehem miracle as priests routed 9-1 by Palestinians

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101027/wl_mideast_afp/palestiniansreligionvaticanfblpaloffbeat

by Philippe Agret Philippe Agret

BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Territories (AFP) – The priests may have been hoping for a miracle when they took on the Palestinian national football team in Bethlehem but they lost 9-1 in a rout of biblical proportions.

After an heroic first half battling valiantly to fend off their hosts, the international lineup of Catholic priests in their yellow and blue strip managed to hold the home side to 0-0 at half-time in a charity match in the southern West Bank late on Tuesday.

Decked out with Palestinian and Italian flags, alongside the white and gold of the Vatican, Bethlehem's Al-Khader stadium was packed with spectators -- among them hundreds of excited children and a respectable showing of Franciscan monks in their trademark brown robes.

Time after time through the tense first half, their God-fearing goalkeeper fended off the Palestinian attack, aided by providence -- and the goal posts.

But it was the second half that proved to be their undoing, as the red-shirted youngsters ran rings around them, putting goal after goal into the back of the net.

"Football means everything here. Children, they love football. It keeps them out of violence, out of the intifada," said Father Ibrahim Faltas, an Egyptian-born Franciscan who founded a football academy for young Palestinians.

"Through sport you can reach peace," he told AFP.

Among those cheering on the team was Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Federation and the man widely credited with revitalising football in the occupied territories.

"The Christian world is with us and the international community got the message," said Rajoub, referring to a recent Middle East synod convened by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican which called for an end to the Israeli occupation.

"It has a very positive impact. It means we are not alone."

For the priests, some of them way past their footballing prime, the final whistle brings deliverance and a return to more conventional pastoral duties.

By Wednesday morning, the ecclesiastical eleven were back to the altar, celebrating mass in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in the heart of Jerusalem's Old City.