The Church of the Holy Sepulchre faces closure during Holy Week due to the threat of strikes on Jerusalem in Israel’s war with Iran. Source: The Tablet.
Civil authorities barred public access to the church along with other sites in Jerusalem shortly after the first Israeli and US strikes and Iranian retaliation on February 28.
The city administration subsequently announced that “all holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, will remain closed … for security reasons in light of the current tensions in the region”.
On March 16, the Israeli foreign ministry reported that an Iranian missile had exploded over Jerusalem and “fragments fell on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Patriarchate, the Jewish Quarter and on the Temple Mount near the Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
With diminishing prospects of a halt to hostilities before the Latin Church celebrates Palm Sunday on March 29, the churches that share the Holy Sepulchre – Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Syriac and Ethiopian Orthodox – have reportedly begun preparations for limited Holy Week celebrations.
Sami el-Yousef, chief executive officer of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said church leaders plan to meet police authorities “to impress on them the need to allow Easter celebrations, even if at a reduced capacity, similar to the pandemic restrictions”, according to OSV News.
Joseph Hazboun, regional director of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association office in Jerusalem, said the church would remain closed to visitors “until the end of the war and the cessation of rocket fire from Iran on Israel”.
The representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archimandrite Ioan Meiu, reported that the present closures have multiple causes besides the war.
“The Church of the Holy Sepulchre remains closed due to the war, but also because we are in the period of Ramadan,” he told the Romanian Patriarchate’s news agency, insisting that although rocket fragments had fallen nearby, “cities are not destroyed, as is unfortunately being speculated online”.
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Holy Sepulchre faces Easter closure as Jerusalem holy sites remain shut (By Patrick Hudson, The Tablet)
