The Western Wall Heritage Foundation has apologised for demanding that a German abbot hide his pectoral cross on a visit to the Jewish holy site.
On 19 July, the abbot of the Dormitio Monastery in Jerusalem, Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel, who is German, was publicly asked to hide his pectoral cross as it was “very large” and “inappropriate for this Jewish site”. The abbot, who was accompanying a group from the German Ministry of Education, refused and the altercation that followed was filmed by a camera team from the German weekly Der Spiegel.
“That was unfortunately the not so happy end to a wonderful tour of Jerusalem. It is very sad to see how under this government the climate in this wonderful city continues to get worse. Jerusalem is after all large enough for all of us!” Schnabel twittered.
The Spiegel video shows him explaining that his cross was part of his dress as a Roman Catholic abbot and not meant as a provocation.
Since the incident a “great many rabbis have and continue to contact me and underline that they are ashamed that I was publicly called on to remove my pectoral cross”, he told Vatican Radio on 24 July.
The increase in hatred and acts of violence against Christians was “enormous”, he said. Cemeteries were being desecrated, churches vandalised and Christians spat at in the street. Deliberately bumping into Christians in the street and telling them to “go home to Italy” was a frequent occurrence. “The rejection we are faced with is tremendous.”
But the numerous messages of solidarity he had received gave him hope, Schnabel said. “People I don’t know come up to me in the street and say, ‘Please don’t go. You belong to Jerusalem and Jerusalem without you is not my Jerusalem. Our feelings are on a roller coaster at the moment. Jerusalem bites and kisses at the same time. On the one hand we have a government which overemphasises the Jewish but underemphasises the democratic character of Israel, and as a reaction we have a civil society which strongly emphasises the democratic element and wants to defend democracy”. Christians, who were a small minority, were experiencing this “double morality” particularly intensively at the moment, he said.
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