Israel Blocked Christian Cardinals From Their Own Holy Sites at Easter — Then Caved When Italy Got Angry

Israeli police blocked Cardinal Pizzaballa from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday. Italy summoned the Israeli ambassador. Here is the sequence of events.

The sequence of events on the morning of March 29 in Jerusalem was diplomatically explosive in a way that the Israeli government appeared not to anticipate, or anticipated and assessed as manageable. It turned out to be neither.

At approximately 7:30 a.m. local time, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa — the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the highest-ranking Catholic official in the Holy Land — attempted with colleagues to travel to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Palm Sunday Mass. The church, which stands at the site traditionally identified as the location of Christ's crucifixion and burial, is the most sacred site in Christendom for Catholics and several other Christian traditions. Palm Sunday is the beginning of Holy Week, the most important week in the Christian liturgical calendar.

Israeli police stopped Cardinal Pizzaballa's vehicle and prevented him from proceeding to the church. The stated justification was security restrictions implemented in response to Iranian missile strikes — Netanyahu had publicly noted that one Iranian missile landed 'meters from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre' in previous days, citing this as an argument that restrictions on access were necessary for safety. The Patriarchate disputed the proportionality of the restriction, noting that Cardinal Pizzaballa and his small party were traveling privately and without any characteristics of a public procession.

The Italian government responded within hours. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced on X that the ban was 'unacceptable' and that he had instructed Italy's ambassador in Israel to protest formally to the Israeli government. He added that the Israeli ambassador in Rome would be summoned for an explanation on Monday.

Israeli police eventually arranged a limited prayer ceremony inside the church under what the Patriarchate described as still-inadequate conditions. The Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives — a centuries-old tradition — was already cancelled due to the war. The combination of the cancelled procession, the initial blocking of the cardinal, and the eventual compromise produced the worst of both worlds: international criticism without the full pastoral benefit that full access would have provided.

Pope Leo's Palm Sunday homily, delivered in Rome, included a specific prayer for 'Christians in the Middle East who cannot fully observe the rites of these holy days' — language that everyone understood as a direct reference to what had happened in Jerusalem that morning.