Kristina Girod

A “S” is not always a sign of a saint.

On November 16, 2,410 years ago, a priest took his cross and his bag, as well as his sheep and his parakeet to the center of Damascus, where they were blessed and brought to Caliph Al-Hakim in the great Suhrawardun Saint Basilica. Then, after a ceremony with holy water and traditional music, the priest prepared himself to go on a missionary journey, no longer bound to his orders, but free in mind and heart to plant and defend the “sacred tree that the Mother of the Covenant blesses herself.”

That is a statement as true today as it was back then, but this wasn’t the first or last missionary voyage undertaken by the Bishop of Jerusalem. John the Baptist, Jesus’ companion at the Transfiguration, embarked on a similar mission in his youth. The first religious pilgrims set foot on French soil in the year 32 of the Synoptic era, after a complete review and reconsideration of their “rights” to presence abroad. A place for them was established by a French bishop in Jerusalem called Cyril of Alexandria, who in 320 blessed an ancient house, the oldest house still in one piece of Arab countryside that contains more graves than any churchyard. This house was extended in the second century, by Byzantine and Ottoman hand, much like a massive undertaking, by the churchman Pangeramus, the first Christian ruler of what was then Arabic Palestine, at the base of the Great Jewish Temple Mount. It was only in 1691 that the house was connected to its Jewish and Christian communities, in the presence of its most eminent benefactor, the Greek pope Paul III (1697-1748), who extended the same blessing on the house not only to the Jews but also the Christians there.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the house was by luck connected with a good number of churches in Southern France, not only in France but in other countries as well. And not only in France but also throughout Europe. In that part of the world, Saint Pope John VI could witness how many of the temples and churches erected during his time would be rebuilt or rebuilt themselves, with new and revised forms.