Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Roman Catholic Church's custodian of holy sites in Israel and the Palestinian territories, met Monday afternoon with Haim and Violet Habibi and their adult daughter Odelia.

Pizzaballa, who is the Vatican's representative responsible for holy sites in Israel, said "it is the intention of the Church to forgive. This hurt us but we are not holding a grudge. As religious Christians, we must deliver a message of peace. There is no peace without justice and there is no peace without forgiveness. Nothing can justify what they did. They are unfortunate individuals.

"It's necessary to give also an important message of justice to the Christians and all the society in the country," Pizzaballa said in response to a question about whether charges should be pressed against the family.

The lawyer for the Habibi family, Pninat Yanai, said her clients embraced and kissed Pizzaballa and requested his forgiveness. Yanai also said her clients asked Batista for assistance in regaining custody of their children from state welfare authorities.

Yanai reported her clients did not expect the Nazareth incident to end as it did and said the Habibis felt Pizzaballa's response was "a big step of compassion."

Yanai appealed Sunday night in the Nazareth District Court against the Magistrate's Court decision to extend by 15 days the remand of Haim and Violet Habibi and their adult daughter Odelia.

"This is a most complex and difficult personal case," Yanai argued, "in which every ear was evidently closed to the silent 'cry of the impoverished,' and every door was locked at the sight of their distress. On the broken backs of the appellants was loaded a difficult and tragic personal story, which entails trials and tribulations, unfolding across years, and which reaches the existential root of the the way the establishment operates in the face of the weak individual with little means."

The appeal detailed the family's troubled saga up to last week, when, Yanai claimed, the welfare authorities decided "without any acceptable reason" to take the couple's youngest son. "In this arbitrary, radical and intolerable move, which was done by force, as the baby was torn from its mother, in the course of breast-feeding, the appellants reached a state of emotional chaos, profound distress, or what they have termed 'the height of the abuse against them.'"

The appeal also claimed that the Habibis came to the church with no intention of harming anyone and that the materials in their possession do not pose a danger to people.

The Church of the Annunciation is built above a sunken grotto where the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she was to bear Jesus.

The church is maintained by the Fransiscan order which Pizzaballa heads in the Holy Land.