c. 2003 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ They answer phones and field questions in English from tourists at holy sites like Jerusalem’s Garden Tomb, revered by many Protestants as Jesus’ burial site. They teach classes in religion to local Christians in church schools; at charity institutions like Bridges for Peace, they pack food bags for Israeli needy and help renovate the homes of poor elderly.

Foreign “volunteers” in local Christian organizations have become an integral element in the life of local Christian churches and institutions whose dwindling lay communities can ill afford paid staff for every duty and task.

Many volunteers are Westerners from North America, Australia and Europe who leave comfortable homes and pensions for an uncertain journey to the Middle East. Others are from developing countries, driven by a desire to serve in the Holy Land. Either way, when it comes time to get their visas approved or extended, they face an almost inevitable collision with the Israeli bureaucracy that seems to care little about their motives and missions.

Clergy comprise the other part of the visa bottleneck. A review of the nationalities of the Catholic nuns, monks and priests with visas currently in limbo offers an ironic comment on the rich human tapestry of peoples who maintain the historic churches and sacred sites of Christianity today.

Among the more than 100 Catholic nuns, monks, priests and seminarians for whom visa extensions have not been granted, you can find people from India and Syria, Iraq, Mali and Poland, the Philippines, Rwanda and Egypt, as well as Burkina Faso, France and Slovakia.

They include Carmelite nuns and monks from Haifa’s famous monastery, founded in 1150 and destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly during the Crusader, Napoleonic and Ottoman eras. Other religious orders with members in legal limbo include the Franciscans of Bethlehem, the Catholic guardians of the Church of the Nativity and more than a dozen women’s religious orders, including the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa.

These nuns, monks and priests do everything from officiating at worship services to tending ancient monastic vineyards. They provide essential services in hospitals, homes for senior citizens and schools.

The fact that many of these clerics hail from the Arab world reflects a time-honored practice whereby, even in a region divided by warring states and nations, clergy and church officials traditionally enjoyed relative freedom of movement in order to minister to far-flung Christian congregations.

But Arab clergy also have come under greater Israeli security scrutiny recently, particularly in the aftermath of last year’s siege of the Church of the Nativity. In that standoff, Palestinian militia members took refuge for five weeks in the Franciscan and Greek Orthodox monasteries adjacent to the ancient church to avoid capture by Israeli forces invading Bethlehem. The Franciscan monks in the monastery, trapped in the middle of the standoff, cooked and provided medical aid to the militia members.

_ Elaine Ruth Fletcher

DEA END FLETCHER