Archbishop Hosam Naoum inspects a tombstone that was vandalized at the Mount Zion Protestant Cemetery in Jerusalem on January 4. AMMAR AWAD/REUTERS
INVESTIGATION – Fights, insults, profanations: since the beginning of the year, the Christian and Armenian neighborhoods of the Old City have been the scene of serial attacks committed by radical Jews. The Christian community, already very fragile, is worried.
Correspondent in Jerusalem
Wrestler’s shoulders, a lumberjack’s beard, hands like beaters: when the powerful silhouette of Father Matheos, “drogman” chief of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, appears at the entrance to the Versavee restaurant, very close to the door of Jaffa, in the heart of the Christian quarter of the Old City, tourists and pilgrims who have come to lunch are silent for a moment and observe it. It’s because the priest imposes it. In Versavee, Father Matheos is at home. Someone brings him a glass of water, he takes a sip, then, with a melancholy air, delivers an alarmist report.
This monk has lived in Jerusalem for twenty-five years. His position as a dragoman made him the guardian of the holy places. “We had become accustomed to small incidents, to spitting on priests for carrying a cross, to insults. But the situation is getting more and more threatening“, he worries. Since the beginning of the year, the assaults and acts of vandalism perpetrated…
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