The visit to Jerusalem by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot was marked Thursday, November 7, by a diplomatic incident. The Israeli police entered army » et « without permission », According to the minister, on the Éléona sanctuary, a site managed by France.
Jean-Noël Barrot denounced a “ unacceptable situation » and refused to enter the pilgrimage site, while Israeli police arrested two French gendarmes on the spot.
“The Eléona estate (…) is an estate which has not only belonged to France for more than 150 years, but whose security and maintenance France ensures with enormous care,” said the minister.
The sanctuary of Eleona, which is located at the top of the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, the Palestinian part of the city occupied and annexed by Israel since 1967, includes a church, a cloister whose construction began in the 1870s is still unfinished and, in the basement, the “du Pater” cave.
A ruined church
According to Christian tradition, Jesus would have frequently retired to the cave of the Father with his disciples. On the entrance pediment is engraved the Latin inscription: The cave in which the Lord taught the apostles on the Mount of Olives which means “ Cave in which the Lord taught his apostles on the Mount of Olives ».
On the site was first built in the IVe century a church to commemorate the Ascension of Christ, under the orders of the Roman Emperor Constantine I. It was finally destroyed by the Persians in 614.
In the 12th century, crusaders built a new church partially financed by the bishop of Denmark who was subsequently buried there with his butler. The Crusader Church gradually fell into ruins and from the 14th century, its stones were used to build tombs.
The site was finally bought at the end of the 19th century by the Princess de la Tour d’Auvergne. The latter had a cloister built there, the plans of which are attributed to Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, to frame the cave. Plaques reproducing the text of the Pater Noster in more than one hundred and seventy languages are affixed to the walls.
The princess donated part of her land to France in 1868. Two other parts were entrusted to Carmelite sisters and White Fathers.
With the Sainte-Anne church, the Tomb of the Kings, and the Benedictine abbey of Abu Gosh, the sanctuary is today part of the four French territories of Jerusalem
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