One of the sorriest sights in Christendom is the shrine that lays claim to being its spiritual center: Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which encompasses the supposed sites of Jesus' crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The thousands of pilgrims who seek it out every year find the church little more than a musty ruin. The southern façade is some 6 in. out of plumb, held up by a cat's cradle of iron shorings erected by the British in 1935. Under the crumbling vaulting of the south transept, a scaffold has been put up to protect tourists from falling masonry. The facing...
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