Raw: Priests Break Out In Fistfights At Jerusalem’s Holiest Spot
Israeli police rushed into Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where Christ was buried, to break up fist fights between dozens of Greek and Armenian priests and worshippers on Orthodox Palm Sunday, witnesses said.
Some 20 officers intervened after Armenian priests and worshippers threw a Greek Orthodox priest out of the church, sparking a free-for-all, they said.
Several worshippers then started beating the police officers with palm fronds they were holding for the Palm Sunday celebrations that mark the return of Jesus to the Holy City a week before he was crucified.
After the incident, dozens of members of Jerusalem’s Armenian community marched from the church to the Old City’s police headquarters in protest at the detention of two Armenians.
Brawls are not uncommon at the church, which is shared by various branches of Christianity, each of which controls and jealously guards part of site — considered one of the holiest in Christianity.
Precisely in order to prevent such disturbances, two Muslim families have been entrusted for the past 800 years with opening and closing the gates of the church, a cavernous labyrinth of chapels and crypts built on the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried.
Orthodox Christians celebrate Palm Sunday according to a different calendar from Catholics and other Christians in the west, who marked the day on March 16.
Tens of thousands of Orthodox worshippers from across the world packed the streets of the Old City for the celebration.
There was no immediate comment from Israeli police.
AFP
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praise Jesus! send them back to armenia and greece or have them convert to islam.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:41 amAs an Orthodox Christian, I find this fighting highly disgraceful and most unchristian in the extreme! One of the problems with our church is the fighting between ethnic groups. However, part of the explanation would seem to be that Greeks are Eastern Orthodox and Armenians are Oriental Orthodox.
The two branches of Orthodox Christianity are not in communion and have not been in communion for many centuries. Dogmatically speaking, the Oriental Orthodox have only accepted the doctrine of the first three Ecumenical Councils.
They have not accepted the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon and are thus held to accept the Monophysite heresy. As doctrinal orthodoxy is extremely important to both the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and both churches recognize the importance of coming back together, there has been much friction between the two.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:03 am