Jericho Orthodox Dispute Drags On

JERICHO, West Bank -- The road to Jericho taken by an Orthodox nun at the center of an international dispute over a Holy Land monastery leads to a two-room trailer surrounded by an orchard of grapefruit and lemon trees.

Inside one room of the trailer is a table dominated by icons of Jesus and Mary and the infant Christ where Sister Maria Stephanopoulos, formerly of Cleveland, will spend six or seven hours each day in prayer during Great Lent. Outside are Palestinian Authority guards who make sure she does not stray too close to the church on the grounds of the Jericho Garden Monastery.

The sister of former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos is now in her third month of self-imposed exile. Holed up in a corner of the monastery grounds, she is protesting the compound's takeover by the Moscow-based "Red" Russian Orthodox Church. Sister Maria belongs to the rival "White" Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, founded by exiles of the Russian Revolution.

Sister Maria, 40, said she hopes her defiant vigil will bring pressure to bear on Palestinian authorities to allow the White monks to return, expel what she calls "Soviet" monks and hand jurisdiction over the monastery back to her faction of the church.

She is hoping Pope John Paul II will address the dispute during his visit this week in the Holy Land. But only divine intervention, she said, will tell her when to give up her protest.

"God put us in here and he'll resolve it as he sees fit," she said. "For now, it's just pray and be a witness."

The dispute between the churches goes back to the Russian Revolution in 1917, when the communist regime took control of the church. Opponents of the communists set up a U.S.-based church in exile and controlled many of the Russian shrines in the Holy Land.

The monastery property was purchased in 1874 by Archimandrite Antonin Kasputin for the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem. The "Red" Russian Orthodox Church maintains it is the sole legal successor of the pre-revolutionary church.

Two months ago, after a visit by Patriarch Alexii II from Moscow, the Palestinian Authority agreed to the Red church leader's appeal to give the property to the Russian Orthodox Church. Palestinian police raided the property near Jericho's central market and expelled White clerics. Sister Maria and Sister Xenia Cesana of San Francisco rushed to the monastery during the raid and refused to leave. Sister Xenia left earlier this month, but Sister Maria has remained inside.

Clad in a black cloak and head covering, Sister Maria remembers being pulled away from the chapel that first day and tossed out the gate by Russian monks.

"That was the scariest moment," she said in an interview. "My head-covering was pulled up and I couldn't breathe."

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