The World - News from Dec. 22, 1986

Unless monks from the Greek Orthodox Church are allowed to symbolically clean a three-square-yard portion of a wall within the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on Dec. 29, a Christmas procession from Jerusalem to Bethlehem will be canceled, Patriarch Diodorus I warned. The annual cleaning is viewed by churches as an expression of rights to sacred Holy Land shrines, which are shared by various Christian denominations. Two years ago, police were called to break up a brawl between Greek and Armenian clergymen brandishing broom handles. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Diodorus rejected an agreement among the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian churches on the cleaning.