 Bartholomew, who serves as head of the Eastern Orthodox Christian church, described the gesture as “brave and bold.”

In 1953, two Franciscan friars discovered hundreds of 1st century ossuaries stored in a cave on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem.The archaeologists claimed to have discovered the earliest physical evidence of a Christian community in Jerusalem, including some very familiar Biblical names.The name inscribed on one ossuary has been interpreted to read