Revision History

Israeli police prevented Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday 2026 — the first such barring in centuries — citing security risks from the ongoing Israel-Iran war. The incident triggered condemnation from the Vatican, Italy, France, and the United States, and intensified a years-long pattern of tightening Israeli restrictions on Christian access to Jerusalem's holy sites, raising questions about the durability of the 19th-century Status Quo agreements governing religious access.