A rare agreement to save the 206-year-old tomb of Jesus in Old City in Jerusalem Old City has brought a spirit of cooperation among warring Christian communities that sometimes have openly sparred over a tomb where it is believed that the Son of God was resurrected.
"One of the serious issues in the church is that the status quo takes place over every other consideration, and it’s not a good thing," Athanasius Macora, a Franciscan friar, told
The New York Times. "Unity is more important than a turf war."
The parties to the March 22 accord for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher include the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic communities in Jerusalem, the Times reports.
"Somebody had to push us," the Rev. Samuel Aghoyan, the Armenian Patriarchate’s representative at the Holy Sepulcher, told the newspaper. "If the Israeli government didn’t get involved, nobody would have done anything."
The site, also called the Aedicule, will undergo a $3.4 million renovation beginning next month, after Orthodox Easter celebrations. The church is currently held together by a 69-year-old iron cage, according to the report.
Each religious group will contribute a third of the costs — and a Greek bank covered the $57,000 cost for scaffolding, in exchange for having its name on the machinery.
The shrine will remain open to visitors during most of the renovation process, Antonia Moropoulou, the conservation expert heading the project, told the Times.
The goal of the restoration effort is to maintain the intangible spirit "of a living monument," she said.
"This tomb is the most alive place," Moropoulou added. More so, she said, "than anything I have seen in my life."
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