Collapse of Jesus' tomb unites rival religious groups

Renovations of the Holy Site are expected to begin May 2016

Jesus' tomb, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, in Jerusalem's Old City, stands at risk of a complete collapse. In the face of the heartbreak of losing the place Christ was resurrected, three commonly feuding Christian groups have come together to save the popular holy site.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Leaders of the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Roman Catholics have joined forces and created a $3.4 million plan to complete renovations of the entire tomb site, also referred to as the Aedicule, by early 2017. Each group is expected to contribute one-third of the costs, with a Greek bank covering $57,000.

In February 2015, the Israeli government barricaded the church under beliefs it was unsafe and near collapse, according to the Christian Examiner. With the guarding monks and hundreds of pilgrims forced out for the day, it was clear to the Christian groups that the time to work together had come.

"Somebody had to push us," the Rev. Samuel Aghoyan, the Armenian Patriarchate's representative at the Holy Sepulcher, told the New York Times. "If the Israeli government didn't get involved, nobody would have done anything."

Currently, the 206-year-old structure is held together by a decades-old iron cage. Underneath the iron bars lies a marble shell built in 1810 during Ottoman rule of Jerusalem, according to The New York Times. Beneath that rests the "remains of the 12th-century Crusader shrine ... erected after the Shiite rule of Egypt, al-Hakim, destroyed the first Aedicule in 1009."

The plan is to remove the layers of history repairing them one step at a time until they reach the actual tomb and repair the deepening cracks.

"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."

According to The New York Times, "complicated, centuries-old rules and minute traditions" prevented any repairs from previously being made because the way Jerusalem's holy sites are governed, the "very act of repairing something can imply ownership."

The last significant attempt at repairing the prevailing aging of the site occurred in the 1950s when the Christian group representatives were pushed into assessing the 1927 quake damage. However, the meetings and process of repairs ended about a decade later.

Following another public "dust-up" in 2008, the conflicting communities once again tried to work together to fix the church but repaired toilets became the only result. Hopes remain high that the present plan will be the one that sticks and the holy site will be restored to safe conditions.

"This tomb is the most alive place than anything I have seen in my life," Antonia Moropoulou, the conservation expert heading the project, stated, noting the site would remain open during the most of the process. "The greatest challenge is to preserve that." 

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