Can the Pope solve riddle of the Last Supper?
It is said by the Vatican to be the site of a seminal moment in human and divine history, when Jesus shared his last meal with his 12 Apostles, instituted the Eucharist and revealed that one of the Apostles would betray him. Today it requires a good deal of imagination – or faith – to place the Last Supper inside the chilly room with Gothic arches in a building that dates from 13 centuries after the death of Jesus.
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When he comes to pray, the Pope will find himself inside a structure that still looks very much like a mosque. “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate,” reads a wall inscription in Arabic. The prayer niche, which blocks out a window, is in Moorish style and marble pillars hold up a pulpit that has a white and black striped arch similar to what one sees in old mosques in Cairo. It is a far cry from the flat-ceilinged room with the long table depicted in Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
Israeli authorities are not willing to give the room to the Vatican without significant compensation. Granted, what the Israelis expect in return is nothing more menacing than some tourism traffic, sanctioned by the Vatican. However, this stubborn pragmatism on the part of the Israelis does not bode well for the status of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, when Israelis and Palestinians sit down to talk peace.
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