A stamp for peace: the Palestinian Saint Mary of Jesus Crucified “Witness of Hope”
In the heart of a Middle East, wounded by wars, violence and divisions, the Church looks to a small woman, daughter of that tormented land, as a shining witness of hope and peace. She is the Carmelite saint Mariam Baouardy (1846-1878), a Palestinian nun canonized by Pope Francis in 2015, affectionately known as “the little Arab”, whom the Vatican Post Office has chosen to honor with a stamp from the “Witnesses of Hope” series, issued on 27 May in this Jubilee Year. A gesture full of meaning, which unites spirituality, current events and prophecy.
In a time marked by unspeakable suffering, especially in the tormented Holy Land, the figure of Mariam Baouardy appears as a sign of consolation. Born in Abellyn, near Nazareth, and lived between Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, she entered the Carmel of Pau (France) on 27 July 1867 with the name of Mary of Jesus Crucified. Her short life went through the dramas and lacerations of a region always in tension. Yet her heart was pacified and pacifying. Illiterate, poor, victim of violence, wounded in the flesh and in the spirit, she was a profound mystic and an instrument of unity. She had visions, stigmata and extraordinary spiritual gifts, but she lived everything with disarming humility. To those who asked her how she could live such intimacy with God, she simply replied: "I am nothing, God is everything".
The choice to dedicate a stamp to her during the Holy Year takes on a clear symbolic and prophetic value. While the world is experiencing new fears and conflicts, particularly in the Middle Eastern region where Baouardy was born and lived, the Vatican Postal and Philately Service offers the philatelic world and the faithful a small sign that speaks silently but forcefully: there is certainly a way of peace, and it is that of the Gospel, lived in the radicality of love, prayer and forgiveness.
From this perspective, the Vatican stamp is not just a collector's item. It is a message. It is an invitation to recognize that even from the darkest places witnesses of light can arise. Mariam Baouardy, a saint of dialogue and brotherhood, was born to Greek-Melkite Catholic parents but lived among different cultures and religions, in a context marked by ethnic tensions. Her sanctity was not ideological, but evangelical: lived as a total gift to God and to others.
In presenting this issue, the Vatican Post Office is acting as a spokesperson for an increasingly pressing need: the need for peace, today more than ever. It is not only the Holy Land that invokes her, but every corner of the planet where people fight, hate and die. The Jubilee, which calls for reconciliation and mercy, finds in the little Palestinian saint, an authoritative and credible voice because she was born from pain and forged in love.
In times when too many words become weapons and too many images only tell of destruction, even a small stamp can announce the essential: that peace is possible. An “unarmed and disarming peace” that can be born where everything seems lost, because it is a gift from God that blossoms in a humble and persevering heart, like that of Mariam Baouardy.