As a retired Roman Catholic Bishop, Thomas Gumbleton has traveled across the world to help people and to get a better grasp of the world’s problems. But for years, there was one glaring omission on his list of trips.

About 20 years ago, while holding mass at St. Anastasia Church in Troy, one of Gumbleton’s parishioners had a request for him.

“She said you’ve got to do something for Palestine,” Gumbleton said of Nuha Aranki, a Palestinian Christian.

Fast forward to the present, and Gumbleton has completed his “fact-finding” mission to the Holy Land. He traveled up and down both Israel and Palestine, interviewing people ranging from downtrodden Palestinian villagers to Israeli soldiers patrolling the border walls, and he came back with a promise to do more to help restore peace in the region.

Gumbleton, considered one of the most liberal bishops the church has seen and who helped draft a 1983 pastoral letter condemning nuclear war, addressed a packed dinner crowd at the Ramallah Club in Westland last Thursday about his experiences overseas.

“From this time on, I intend to be very much engaged with this issue,” he said, “and for the U.S. to bring justice and ultimately peace to the Holy Land.”

Gumbleton saw a lot in his time in Palestine and Israel, but most of it was not pleasant. He spoke about how there’s only five places where people can enter and exit the Gaza Strip and how difficult it is for Palestinians in their day-to-day lives.

He spoke about how the people of Gaza are “suffering deeply now with their lack of hospitals.”

He even spoke about how the media makes Gaza’s residents look bad for firing rockets into Israel as opposed to Israel’s own attacks being made out to look like self-defense.

“When you saw on TV that John McCain visited these places, he talked about the crude rocket attacks by Palestinians, but he never mentioned anything about Israel’s attacks,” he said.

These are words many people aren’t accustomed to hearing from members of the Catholic Church, but the gathered dinner crowd at the Ramallah Club wasn’t surprised.

Many of the attendees were members of the Friends of Sabeel group, a peace movement designed to give a voice to Palestinian Christians. Gumbleton is a member of the group’s advisory board. Friends of Sabeel works to build understanding and relationships among Christians in many countries as part of Sabeel International, a worldwide movement working to end military occupation in the Holy Land through advocacy of international law, human rights and the Christian call to peacemaking.

The perspective gained by Palestinian Christians on the issues surrounding the Holy Land is one that many others of their faith don’t have a chance to share, but it’s one that Gumbleton was glad to have a chance to experience.

He said he hadn’t talked to other members of the Catholic Church yet about his experiences, but he hoped to do so in the coming weeks.

Prior to Gumbleton’s speech, the audience watched a film entitled “Searching for Peace in the Middle East,” a 30-minute documentary by Landrum Bolling interviewing key figures on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It talked about how close to half of all Palestinians live below the poverty line, about the anger the occupation by Israeli troops incites in Palestinians, about the hatred toward the Israeli West Bank wall, and also about how some people from both sides of the conflict are coming together in attempts to foster peace in the region.

The video had emotions flowing in the room, and Gumbleton added a personal touch to it with his own slideshow and stories of his time in the Holy Land.

One particularly powerful story was about how every Friday in one small village, Palestinian protestors would gather near areas blocked off by barbed wire for peaceful demonstrations in front of Israeli soldiers. But each time they got anywhere near where the soldiers were standing, the soldiers responded by shooting tear gas canisters at them and opening fire with rubber bullets, which are known to injure and in some cases even kill people.

Gumbleton closed with a heartfelt message for the crowd about the need for the U.S. to step in and put an end to the violence and “apartheid” as former president Jimmy Carter called it in the Holy Land.

“We give more financial assistance to Israel than any other country and almost all of it is military aid,” he said. “With the next presidential election, we have to choose the candidate who will restore the effort for peace and use the leverage we have.”

Gumbleton was given a piece of artwork from artist Michael Shamat after his presentation. Shamat donated several pieces for sale to raise money for the Friends of Sabeel. The artwork featured a calligraphy design that said “blessed are the peacemakers” in Arabic writing.

At the end of the night, George Khoury, manager of the American Ramallah Federation, thanked Gumbleton for coming out and sharing his stories with the crowd.

“We really appreciate him, his courage, and the way he says the truth.”