(LifeSiteNews) — A much-loved and admired Catholic priest who has served the faithful in the besieged town of Beit Sahour — the Shepherd’s Field — outside Bethlehem is being forced by the Israeli government to leave the occupied Palestinian territories and return to his native Jordan across the border.

At an emotional gathering at Our Lady of Fatima Latin Church on Sunday, the parish’s pastor, Father Louis Salman, offered his final Mass before his departure due to the Israeli authorities refusing to renew his residency permit, forcing him to depart by May 11.

As reported by IMEMC News, Fr. Salmon, 36, a prominent spiritual mentor to Palestinian Christian youth, was subjected to an “unusually long and intensive security interrogation by Israeli authorities” before being formally put on notice he must leave the country.

Israel Expels Father Louis Salman from the Land of Jesus

Father Louis Salman, a Jordanian priest who serves as a parish priest in Beit Sahour, a majority Palestinian Christian town near Bethlehem and biblically known as the Shepherds’ Field, also serves as the spiritual guide of… pic.twitter.com/tqNZfjJk7U

— Jack Nassar | جاك نصار (@jacknassar33) May 11, 2026

Before entering the major seminary just outside Bethlehem in 2014, Fr. Salmon studied computer technologies. He was ordained a priest in 2021 and his name became prominent among Palestinians in 2022 when he organized a solemn funeral presession for Shireen Abu Akleh, a Catholic American Palestinian journalist for Al Jazeera who was intentionally assassinated by the Israeli army while wearing a vest clearly marked with the word “PRESS.”

In a Vatican News interview with her brother, Anton Abu, last year, he explained how his late sister “entered the hearts of the Palestinian people” and “was the voice of Palestine, the voice of oppressed people of the Holy Land” at the time she was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli soldier.

According to the Associated Press, the funeral procession “turned into perhaps the largest display of Palestinian nationalism in Jerusalem in a generation” that the Israeli police countered with physical attacks, beating mourners with batons, including the pallbearers causing them, at one point, to almost drop the casket.

Israeli riot police pushed and beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to briefly drop the casket.

The procession turned into perhaps the largest display of Palestinian nationalism in Jerusalem in a generation. pic.twitter.com/fmJJMmBpQj

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 13, 2022

As is typical for cases of Israelis assaulting or killing Palestinians, the Israeli government has not held anyone responsible for the direct murder of Abu Akleh.

According to Church sources, Israel justified Fr. Salman’s expulsion, citing his political positions, his influence on Christian youth, and his public descriptions of Israel being an occupying power despite this judgment being shared by around 185 of 193 member states of the United Nations (95.8%) that call for a two-state-solution. Additionally, a full 157 of these nations (81.3%) formally recognize the State of Palestine in this regard, and thus the occupation, as does the Holy See.

The Israeli occupation of Palestine even remains recognized by the Israeli government’s “greatest ally,” the United States, yet somehow a Catholic priest in Palestine is not permitted to utter this near-universal judgment without being expelled from the country.

Israeli anti-Christian pressures, hostilities, attacks escalating

Fr. Salman’s expulsion comes amid escalating pressures from the Israeli government being imposed upon Palestinian Christians, their churches and institutions across the Holy Land.

In March, the Israeli government instituted a policy prohibiting Christian Palestinian teachers who live in the West Bank from working in any of the 15 Christian schools in Jerusalem in a move that threatens to weaken the two-millennia presence of Christians in the Holy City.

Additionally, the U.S.-backed Israeli army assaulted Palestinian Christians and Muslims last week who were celebrating the Feast of St. George at a Christian monastery just south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

On April 19, a photograph surfaced on X and other social media outlets showing an Israeli soldier smashing the head of a statue of Jesus Christ with a sledgehammer. The image quickly went viral and sparked global outrage among Christians, including the Catholic bishops of the Holy Land, who issued an “unreserved condemnation” of the desecration. Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa stated that the act “constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon.”

READ: Israeli soldier desecrates statue of Blessed Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jewish terrorists from illegal Israeli settlements have repeatedly terrorized the predominantly Christian town of Taybeh as well as other Palestinian communities.

As has become a regular occurrence, masked settlers last July “stormed this Christian village … setting vehicles on fire, hurling rocks at homes, and spraying hateful graffiti on the walls.”

The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem described the armed intruders as being on horseback, spreading terror and torching holy sites while also destroying farmland.

Last month, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem also called Jewish settler destruction of their Church-owned lands and trees using an excavator “a ‘red line.’”

In Jerusalem, physical assaults and harassment have surged. Earlier this month, video captured a “brutal assault on (a) Catholic nun” who was slammed to the ground and kicked by a Jewish settler terrorist named Yonah Schreiber near King David’s tomb.

Other reports document the common occurrence of Christian clergy and religious being spat on and harassed by Jewish terrorists in Jerusalem.

Such incidents have highlighted the persistent and even deadly aggressions from radical Jewish sects over land and security in the West Bank and Jerusalem, where Church properties have faced repeated pressures with Christians consistently warning their western co-religionists that radical Zionist movements, most often with government sanction, are seeking to drive them out of the Holy Land.

Pope Leo XIV met with Father Louis Salman & 51 Palestinians from the Youth of Jesus’ Homeland Palestine (YJHP) before the recent general audience at St. Peter’s Square in Rome. (October 1, 2025)
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#FAUXCLAVE #Fauxmoi #Gossip pic.twitter.com/KPAUwExynz

— INBELLA (@inbella) October 5, 2025

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