By Abigail Tucker. Feuding monks at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem don’t just cast the first stone—they stockpile rocks in anticipation of future altercations. Several holy men landed in the hospital two Christmases ago after a fight broke out over the dusting of church chandeliers. The occasional brawls at the 1,700-year-old basilica, believed to mark the birthplace of Jesus Christ, reflect the difficulty of housing three Christian denominations under a single roof.
And now that roof is rotting, threatening the structural integrity of the building. Parts of the wooden truss structure date to the 15th century, and holes in the timbers allow dirty water to drip upon the precious paintings and mosaics below. The problem has been worsening for decades, but the resident clerics—from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches and the Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church—are jealous of each other’s claims of custody and have been unable to agree on a plan of action. Despite the Palestinian Authority’s recent effort to intervene, historians despair of saving the place.
“It is in the direst need of the greatest care,” says Jaroslav Folda, a University of North Carolina professor emeritus of art history who studies the Crusader paintings on the basilica’s red limestone columns. “This church is one of the holiest sites in Christianity. It is the victim here.”
The fortresslike basilica is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the world, having survived—some would say miraculously—various invasions, regime changes, fires, earthquakes and, most recently, the 2002 siege of Bethlehem, when armed Palestinians hid in the church from Israeli forces for weeks. Some wonder if the church has been spared only to be destroyed by the people who cherish it the most. The atmosphere of hostility “taints the holy place,” says the Rev. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, a Roman Catholic priest who teaches archaeology at the École Biblique in Jerusalem.
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, which controls Bethlehem, promised last November that his government would help organize a roof restoration effort and set up a fund for donations. But money isn’t the issue. In fact, all three churches seem to want the historic privilege of picking up at least part of the tab, as a means of edging out the competition.
The Church of the Nativity was built around A.D. 330 by the first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine and was mostly destroyed—possibly during a Samaritan rebellion in A.D. 529—though parts of the original mosaic floor remain. Soon after, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian rebuilt the church in a bigger, grander fashion—largely the structure that remains today. In A.D. 614, the Persians, who razed many other churches during wars with Byzantium, spared the Church of the Nativity, supposedly out of respect for a mosaic of the Magi shown wearing Persian attire.
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