Holy Sepulcher Church Paint Job an Act of Faiths

Just in time for Easter, the three Christian denominations that uneasily share the Church of the Holy Sepulcher have announced that, after 17 years of bitter dispute, they have finally agreed on how to decorate a piece of Christendom’s holiest site.

If all goes as planned, work should begin in two months on painting the dome of the rotunda, the part of the church that houses the tomb where Jesus is believed to have been buried.

Participants in the tortuous negotiations that led to the accord hail it as a near-miracle, a rare instance of unanimity among churches known more for their quarrels than for their ability to cooperate with one another.

But no one is pleased with the mundane design that was accepted as the one option certain not to offend anyone.

“It is not the best that we could have done,” acknowledged Timothy, who bears the ancient title of Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Lydda and is an assistant to the Greek Patriarch in Jerusalem. Timothy participated in 12 years of debate on the committee charged with choosing a design for the dome and made up of representatives of the three denominations--the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Church and the Latins, or Roman Catholics.

In the end, the committee was unable to decide the issue and referred it to the Latin, Greek Orthodox and Armenian patriarchs.

The patriarchs set aside the nearly two decades of research, sketches and models done by an international team of architects and engineers and commissioned Ara F. Normart, an artist from Fresno, to paint the dome.

“It was a way out of the deadlock,” Timothy explained, noting that the patriarchs deliberately chose a foreign artist “with no connection to any of the communities here.”

Normart plans to paint a pearly white backdrop with 12 golden rays symbolizing the 12 apostles. The simple design is far removed from the elaborate motifs the denominations spent nearly two decades debating.

Several years were spent considering the Greek proposal to decorate the dome with a Byzantine-style mosaic depicting the resurrection of Christ. The original church was built by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine in the 7th Century, the Greeks argued, so any restoration or decoration should be faithful to that design.

The Latins and the Armenians protested that the current structure was built in the 12th Century by the Crusaders, and that a Byzantine mosaic would be meaningless to most of the church’s nearly 1 million annual visitors, mostly Western Christians.

Once the mosaic was vetoed, three more years were consumed considering plans to fill the dome with depictions of cherubs. Both the Western church and the Eastern church use cherubs in their decoration of churches, and it was believed that a cherub acceptable to both would not be hard to find.

But a worldwide search could not turn up an acceptable cherub. Neither could the churches agree on a motif of billowing clouds, nor a botanical pattern.

Each time, said George Hentlian, an Armenian who served as the secretary of the technical committee, the clash between the Western church and the Eastern church over design and materials was so profound as to be insurmountable. The Armenians sided with the Latins in the search for a design.

“We wanted something that would inspire the pilgrim when he looked up at the dome,” Hentlian said. “This design that we agreed upon will not inspire anybody.”

As negotiations dragged on, the Greeks infuriated the Latins and the Armenians by decorating, on their own, the smaller Dome of the Catholica that covers the Greek Orthodox chapel adjacent to the rotunda of the tomb. The Greeks installed a brightly colored Byzantine mosaic that art historians condemned as tasteless. The Latins and the Armenians sent letters of protest to the Greeks but never received replies, they say.

The Greeks say they were simply exercising their right, spelled out in an 1852 edict issued by the Ottoman sultan and known as the Status Quo, to decorate any part of the church they control in any way they wish.

The Status Quo governs conduct among the denominations in five sites holy to Christians. The rules are vague and complicated, but their essence is that possession means everything. And in areas shared by the three denominations, changes--or even routine maintenance--can be performed only by consensus.

Just the news that the dome will be painted could brighten the pilgrimage of thousands of Christians now descending on Jerusalem to celebrate Easter. At the very least, it means that there is hope that the labyrinth of rusting scaffolding that has marred much of the interior for four decades--the result of a restoration project that began in 1954 and has been bogged down by running disputes--may be removed in another couple of years.

That would be a real accomplishment, said Father Jerome Murphy O’Connor, a Dominican priest who has lived in Jerusalem for 30 years and written extensively on the history of the holy sites here.

As it stands today, O’Connor said, the scarred and divided Holy Sepulcher is “palpably un-Christian.”

But O’Connor, who delightedly regales listeners with tales of the church’s dramatic history, regards it with a certain affection.

“It resembles a beautiful woman who has lived through interesting times,” he said during a recent tour of the church’s many nooks and crannies. “It reflects all the vicissitudes of the church in Jerusalem. You could have a much more beautiful church, but it wouldn’t be so interesting.”

Walls that have no architectural logic, but provide a place for the Greeks to hang their oil-burning lamps, divide the church into a warren of chapels and niches. Scaffolding looms overhead, silent witness to the denominational divisions.

At certain hours, an organ that the Roman Catholics recently rebuilt to increase its volume blasts hymnal music so loudly that the Greek Orthodox priests can hardly hear themselves chant. The Greeks regard the loud music as a deliberate affront, but their protests to the Latins fall on deaf ears.

As pilgrims prostrate themselves on the cool stone floor beneath the Greek Orthodox altar that sits atop Golgotha, the rock where it is believed Jesus was crucified, the robed priests of various denominations keep carefully to their turf, tending their lamps and incense burners. Ever watchful of each other, they seem generally oblivious to the never-ending stream of tourists tramping through their domain.

The facade of the church, a stone just inside the entrance where tradition says Jesus’ body was anointed after the crucifixion, and the rotunda are common areas shared by the denominations.

About 65% of the rest of the church belongs to the Greek Orthodox. The Latins and the Armenians divide the remainder, with the Armenians granting the use of a tiny chapel behind the tomb to the Syrian Orthodox, and another chapel to the Egyptian Copts.

The Ethiopian Abyssinians are restricted to Deir al Sultan, a collection of tiny stone buildings clinging to the east side of the Holy Sepulcher like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Neither the Syrians, the Egyptians nor the Ethiopians have the right to participate in decisions on the Holy Sepulcher.

But each of the six denominations clinging to a piece of the church or its outbuildings disputes the others’ possession of some part of the church--a chapel, a column or even a stone step. Wherever a dispute exists, repairs generally cannot be made, so some of the church is dilapidated.

“In the Holy Land, possession is everything,” O’Connor said. The priests fanatically guard the cleaning, repair, decoration and use of every inch of the Holy Sepulcher, O’Connor said, “because if you let someone get away with it in the Middle East, they get to keep it.”

The issue of who should pay for the dome--a sensitive point, because payment is an indication of possession--has been solved by securing an anonymous donor to foot the $300,000 bill.

“We are living in a period when dialogue goes on with sincerity and love,” the bearded, black-robed Timothy said. “There is a spirit of cooperation” that did not exist in past centuries.

Still, he cautioned, “that does not mean that all of us should give up our rights. It is a very delicate balance that we are trying to maintain.”

Outsiders should not chastise the denominations for failing to unite in brotherly love inside the Holy Sepulcher, warned Father Claudio Baratto, a Franciscan monk who lived for two years in the complex.

“Are there not divisions in the church outside of the Holy Sepulcher?” Baratto asked. “Is there brotherly love throughout the world? Why then should we be expected to be better than our brothers?”