Part One Greek Unorthodox

The Holy Land: the place where Christianity was born, and has existed continuously from the beginning; yet the Greek Orthodox Church has moved in to key holy sites and treated them as its own fiefdom.

The Holy Land: the place where Christianity was born, and has existed continuously from the beginning; yet the Greek Orthodox Church has moved in to key holy sites and treated them as its own fiefdom. In doing so, it has alienated the local congregation of Palestinian Christians to the point where it's accused of running a property business, not a religious institution.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre
This allegation coincides with a whole outburst of financial, sexual, political and legal scandal that's affected the Church, not only in Jerusalem and the Holy Land but in Greece itself. We focus on some land deals in Jerusalem which have profound political, financial and moral implications; they even impact on the larger Middle East issue as the land in question was a key discussion point when Clinton, Arafat and Barak met at Camp David. The Greek Orthodox Church is the second-largest landowner in Jerusalem after the Israeli state and this property business is presided over by a secretive organisation of Greek bishops called the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre - it owns the leases both of the prime minister's residence and the Knesset, which has just expired.