El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-11-05

monks.
| The church of the Holy Sepulcher, the
| greater part of which belongs to the
! Greeks, brings in tens. of thousands OF
pounds every year to the church. There
| are thousands of Russians who make
pilgrimages to this city, and each is ex-
! pected to leave an offering according to
! his wealth and spiritual desires.
| The Greek church also owns the shops
of new bazaar which has been opened
near the Holy Sepulcher, and it holds
| the titles to the most valuable of the
buildings about the Jaffa gate and Da-
vid's tower, including that in which the
Grand New hotel is.
The native monks say that the Greek
priests who have been imported from
| Constantinople, Athens, Smyrna, the
/ Isle of Samos and other places now hold
| all the fat jobs, and that they are COM
PEELED to work for something like 81
| each per month. They do the pastoral
work of the villages and act as the
priests of the towns On the other hand,
the outsiders have amassed fortunes.
| They pretend to be hermits and devoted
to fasting and prayer, but they are ae-
cused of living luXuriously and of keep
| ing establishments which are by no
means as good as they should be.
Christians Flogged By Mohammedans.
Indeed, the fights among the warning
Christians are such that the Mohamme-
! dan soldiers have to use whips, TO keep
them in order. The Turks are always
on guard in the church of the Holy Sep
ulcher | have seen them there at East
er time, when they were whipping the
quarreling Greeks, Armenians and CoptS
in order to separate them. During the
! fight knives were drawn, and it is not
an uncommon thing for blood to pollute
lOl-- Co., rl1'hn oil To-
| went last week to Bethlehem to
visit the church of the Nativity. In the
stable where Christ was born a line has
| been drawn across the center of the
floor On one side of that line the
Greek Catholics claim their rights and
I the other side belongs to the Romans.
As the two sects were worshIpmg,
| Mohammedan soldier with a gun and
| whip in his hand stood at each end OF
| the line and kept order. Other Moslem
| soldiers were guarding the services in
| the church overhead.
1t seems disgraeeful to think that Mo-
| hammedans should be necessary to keep
| the peace among Christians. Neverthe-
| less. Palestine belongs to the sultan, and
| it is his troops who must maintain order.
year or so ago a pilgrim had a tight
in the church of the Nativity during
which he shot one monk and woGnde..
two others, and such troubles are liable
to arise any day in the church of the
! Sepulcher.
This is especially so at Easter time,
when the thousands belonging to the dill
ferent sects 90 marching about singing
their fanatical songs and denouneing each
other. One of their cries is: This is the
tomb or our Lord" Another is, God
help the sultan" and third, "Oh, Jews,
Jews. your feasts are the feasts of pigs.
As they 90 the Greeks jostle the Ar
menians and the Abyssinians bump
against the Latins Not lonT since the
followers of one sect set fire to some
rich hangings that had been placed IN
grotto of the church by the followers
of another sect. 4 fire occurred. the
church was filled with SMOKE aud il mar
rowly escaped being burned
What the Natives Want.
The Greeks of Palestine claim that
they have the right, under the new Tur-
kish constitution, to all the ,'ilrchcs,
converts and monasteries belonging to
their church in the Holy Land. They de-
mand that the money changers, as they
call the foreign priests, be whipped out
of the temple, and that the gifts of the
pilgrims be applied to the building of
hospitals. old age homes and schools for
their children. This movement is not
confined to Jerusalem, but it extends
throughout Palestine. and it has the APP
prevail of the best element of the cOnl-
munities. There are altogether about
Ga. 900 native Greeks here, and they have
recently had meetings attended by dele
gates from their colonies living in Jaffa,
Nablous. Tiberias and Bethlehem. They
have. | understand, demanded that the
patriarch resign. and have sent word to
II IL Il %
him.
We have so few Greek Christians in the
United States that it is hard for us to
appreciate what the Greek church means.
It is one of the strong churches OF the
world. 1t has altogether about lO0,OOn.-
900 members. which is more than one
fifth of all the Christians on earth and
more than twO-thirds as many rs all the
Protestants [ have before ME the latest
statistics of religious denominations.
There are in the world 23O00O,0OO RO-
man Catholics, about 150,O0O,OOo Protes-
tants. O00O0.000 Greek Christians, j.
600 900 who belong to the church of
Abvssinia and about 100000 Armen-
ians. The sum total of Christians is less
than one-third of the population OF the
world.
On the other hand, there ara 256,000,7
900 Chinese who worship Confucius, $780,
600 900 Hindoos. 10000 900 Mohamme-
dams and 147.000,0O0 Buddhists. Those
who believe in the various other religions
are fewer.
The Patriarch of Jerusalem.
During nv stay here I have had an
interview with the patriarch of the
Greek church He is the pope of this part
of the world as far as that denomination
is concerned, and he controls the vast
possessions owned by the Greeks in the
HOLY Land. | am told that the income
of the church is something ike 81 100000
year, and that the greater part of this
fund is administered by him. ] have met
the pope at Rome, but lis holiness does