"He gave us hope," says Roni Tabash in Bethlehem
Palestinian Christians feel they have lost a "great friend" says Anton Salman, mayor of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
"He was one of the few leaders in the world who was supporting Palestinian rights and came running to achieve peace in the region," he tells me.
When the Pope visited the Holy Land in 2014, a defining image was his prayer for peace by the graffitied, concrete wall which blocks Bethlehem from Jerusalem - part of Israel’s West Bank barrier.
He went on to lead thousands of local Christians - part of a dwindling religious minority - in an open-air mass outside the Nativity Church, built on the spot where it is believed Jesus was born.
"It was really a very special day. Even I sang for him," says Roni Tabash, a local souvenir seller who has large pictures of the Pope on the shutters of his store. "He gave us hope, he always told us to have more faith, to resist, to continue, to stay here."
Many Palestinians praise Pope Francis for his regular calls to a priest in Gaza City at the Holy Family Catholic Church, as he checked on the well-being of some of the hundreds of Gazan Christians sheltering on site.
Recently the Pope had been increasingly vocal about Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, calling the situation there "dramatic and deplorable". In his last Easter message he called for a ceasefire, demanding that Hamas release remaining hostages as well as for aid of "starving people that aspires to a future of peace".
