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The Church of theNativity, Jesus’sbirthplace, gets its firstrepairs in more than500 years

By William Booth, Published: May 22

The Church of Nativity in Bethlehem — where

tradition says Jesus Christ was born — is getting its first restoration in centuries. Master craftsmen are replacing

the basilica's ancient wood with slightly less ancient wood from other buildings.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — When Pope Francis arrives here Sunday on his first trip to the Holy Land aspontiff, he will enter the Church of the Nativity for private contemplation at the grotto believed to mark the

birthplace of Jesus Christ. He may also notice that the church is falling apart.

The 1,700-year-old basilica is one of the oldest in Christendom, and the church is showing its age: The lead-

covered roof leaks, the ancient rafters are rotting and water drips onto the 12th-century mosaics of hovering

angels. So notorious is its decay that it was listed by the United Nations as an endangered world heritage site in

2012.

But in a kind of modern-day miracle, the three Christian denominations that share an acrimonious joint custody of

the pilgrimage site — the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches and the Franciscan order of

Roman Catholics — were persuaded by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to allow Italian master

craftsmen, working alongside structural engineers and wood scientists, to perform the first major documented

restoration since Venetian carpenters rebuilt the roof in 1479.

Pope Francis will get a look at the progress. After five years of study and debate, the first phase of work —fixing the sagging beams and replacing the bullet-pocked windows — is expected to be complete by Christmas,

at a cost of about $3 million. The money was raised by the international community and dispersed by the

Palestinians, so that none of the three caretakers can claim credit — or more rights — over the church.

Renovations of mosaics, doors and paintings may follow if more funds can be secured.

Thomas Coex

AFP/Getty Images

5/25/2014 The Church of the Nativity, Jesus’s birthplace, gets its first repairs in more than 500 years - The Washington Post

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Palestinian workers hold a banner bearing likenesses of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, left,

and Pope Francis in front of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

On a recent sunny morning, Marcello Piacenti, a 53-year-old son of a family of Tuscan restorationists, scrambled

up the scaffolding in a pair of Chuck Taylor sneakers to show a visitor the wooden rafters, which were fragrant

with incense and rot.

“If this was your house, naturally, you might just want to replace the whole roof. But not here. The timbers are

the church,” Piacenti said.

“We have to listen to each piece of wood and hear the story it tells us,” Piacenti said. “We have been surprised

so many times to see what we have found here.”

If these walls could talk

Surprises include a hole left from a stray bomb that fell in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as sophisticated

6th-century seismic retrofitting that allows the roof, even today, to “float” during an earthquake.

Also: the amount of iron nails. About seven tons of them, some two feet long. Many are nearly as sharp as the

day they were hammered into the wood.

To persuade the caretakers of the church to allow the repairs, the Piacenti family is performing the restorationwhile keeping the church open. Mostly, the carpenters work at night.

The original basilica, built in the 4th century by Roman Emperor Constantine, was leveled in the Samaritan Revolt

of A.D. 529, though the floor mosaics survived. The church that stands today was constructed during the reign ofJustinian in the 6th century.

Ilia Yefimovich

Getty Images

A monk at the Church of the Nativity.

It is built directly above a cave where tradition holds that Jesus was born to Mary and then laid in a manger

because there was no place for them at the inn. Visitors who enter the church — after waiting in a long lineoutside what is one of the most popular Christian sites in the Holy Land — are herded along by monks to kneel

at a subterranean altar and peer through a hole in a slab of marble to see the bedrock.

Over the centuries, the church has been besieged, burned, looted and shaken by earthquakes. It wastransformed into a walled fortress by the Crusaders, who crowned their kings here.

The structure has also been beset by fungi, termites, sun, wind and rain. A Christmas storm last year dropped a

foot of snow on the roof.

Qustandi Shomali, a professor at Bethlehem University, wrote a recent study of the physical state of the church,one of the most fought-over places in the Holy Land. He said “evidence of the turbulent history of the church canbe readily seen in the fabric of the building.”

5/25/2014 The Church of the Nativity, Jesus’s birthplace, gets its first repairs in more than 500 years - The Washington Post

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In 2002, during the second Palestinian uprising, dozens of Palestinian militants who were being chased by Israeli

soldiers took cover in the church for 39 days. Restorers have found bullet holes in the windows, which are to bereplaced with a special glass to reduce the ultraviolet rays reaching the medieval paintings below.

A delicate balance

Piacenti lifted a cross-section of a roof beam, honeycombed with termite tunnels. The wood tells the story, he

said.

The beam was constructed of larch. According researchers at the Trees and Timber Institute in Italy, the tree thatit was carved from was felled in the high-altitude forests of the eastern Alps sometime between 1440 and 1460,

and then floated down a network of rivers to Venice. There, it was put aboard a ship bound for what is now theIsraeli port of Jaffa and then carried overland to Bethlehem.

William Booth

Washington Post

A craftsman from an Italian restoration company repairs the church’s roof.

William Booth

Washington Post

The old windows have bullet holes from a 2002 siege between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli army.

That was the last fully documented restoration. Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, paid for repairs, the

Republic of Venice supplied the wood, and the carpenters and Edward IV of England donated the lead for theroof. The conservationists have also found evidence of more recent repairs: by Greek carpenters in the 1670s

and by Ottoman-era workers after the earthquake of 1834.

Piacenti said each section of rafter, truss and tie-beam is examined microscopically and rated for its level ofdeterioration. Each repair requires a meeting of engineers, archaeologists and wood specialists. The craftsmen

want to replace the bare minimum, but they also want their work to last a long time.

How long?

“If there is no water incursion, this wood should last forever,” Piacenti said. “Water is life, of course, but for theroof of the church it is death, because with water the wood comes back to life, and life in this case is decay.”

To replace larch beams, the restorationists have scoured markets selling ancient timbers — obviously a speciality

niche — for beams of similar age that would have been salvaged from palaces and monasteries.

“We have bought 400 pieces, but only 50 are just right,” Piacenti said.

To repair a beam, they fit a new section of wood over the old, like a glove onto a finger, and reinforce the work

with steel struts as if setting a broken bone. All the restoration work is done by hand, using tools and techniquesthat would have been familiar to the ship’s carpenters sailing with Christopher Columbus. They pull out the 500-

year-old iron nails and reuse them.

5/25/2014 The Church of the Nativity, Jesus’s birthplace, gets its first repairs in more than 500 years - The Washington Post

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Ilia Yefimovich

Getty Images

Tourists gather at the church of Nativity, where Pope Francis is due to make his first visit as pontiff.

Piacenti said he initially worried that the monks who serve as custodians of the church would bicker and fight.

Famously, the priests once brawled because the Greeks, while dusting a chandelier, moved a ladder into the

space reserved for the Armenians — a violation of a 200-year-old agreement to maintain a delicate status quo

and do everything just as it has always been done.

So Piacenti and his workers have been very careful not to kick up too much dust.

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