The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which the pilgrims believed was the tomb of Jesus in the Old City of Jerusalem, has closed its doors for the first time since the Black Plague, according to the guardian of the now closed church.
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“Seeing the holy church closed is very, very, very unhappy to me,” Adeeb Joudeh told The Washington Post after receiving an Israeli government’s order of physical fitness on March 25. “All the churches, mosques and synagogues in Jerusalem are closed, but we sense the situation. We all pray.”
Joudeh, who is a Muslim, is part of the circle of relatives of the lineage that goes back 8 centuries to whom the keys of the church have been entrusted.
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According to tradition, two non-Christian families were given custody of the key and others were given the task of opening the doors and finishing them each and every night, due to sectarian struggles, a fact not unusual in the sites of the Holy Land over the years. according to the Post.
Tourists and pilgrims enter and leave the sacred place, but now the UNESCO World Heritage site is strangely silent, especially in the days leading up to Easter, Easter and Ramadan.
But the leaders of the region still pray at the gates of the Holy Sepulchre.
The closure comes after the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, was closed and in the middle of the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, remained open, but only to the citizens of the Old City.
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“We have been informed of the closure. We’re for a week. We hope that (the church) will reopen as soon as possible,” Wadie Abunassar, spokesman for the local clergy, told the Times of Israel.
Israel has shown more than 4,300 cases with at least 16 deaths when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes into quarantine after an aideson tested positive, he showed Fox News on Monday.