Breaking Israel News: The Vatican is transporting pieces of wood to Bethlehem that are claimed to be from the manger that held Jesus when he was born. Citing Bethlehem’s mayor, Anton Salman, WAFA News reported last Friday that the permanent transfer of the relic came as a result of a meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Pope Francis.
Salman said the relics were taken from Bethlehem around 1,000 years ago, and are now likely to be placed inside Saint Catherine’s Church, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square, the reputed site of Jesus’s birth. The relics are expected to be displayed in ceremonies in Jerusalem on Friday and will arrive in Bethlehem on Saturday, the day the Palestinian town traditionally lights its Manger Square Christmas tree.
“It is a historic move. It returns to its original place, and it will be a factor of attraction to believers from inside Palestine and to tourists from all over the world,” Amira Hanania, a member of Abbas’s Higher Committee of Churches Affairs, said to the press. Read more…
Opinion: Bethlehem, the burial place of Rachel (wife of Jacob) and birthplace of King David, is a closed city to Jews. It is in Area A under complete PA civil and security control.
On our trip to Israel last May, we visited Bethlehem, the birth place of Jesus, and saw a sprawling city divided by security walls and fences separating Christian Arabs and Muslim Arabs. Our Jewish guide had to get off the tour bus before we entered Bethlehem. A Christian Arab guide replaced her. It was surreal…
Pope Francis made another deal over what is a dubious relic with one of the most blood-thirsty terrorists in the world, a man he once called an ‘angel of peace‘, to increase tourism in the place where the Savior was born and His chosen people are hated.
“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon.” Rev. 13:1
