Christian pilgrims from around the world on Sunday flocked to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem's Old City where many believe Jesus was resurrected after his crucifixion 2,000 years ago.Thousands of faithful filled every nook and cranny of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a cavernous labyrinth of chapels and crypts built on the site where most churches believe Jesus to have been crucified and buried.
"It's great to be here where it happened," Manuella Anduku of the Philippines told AFP after attending the chaotic service inside one of Christianity's most revered sites. "It seems more real."
Inside the church, uneasily shared by several Christian denominations, the pilgrims pushed and shoved as they jockeyed for position to get a better view of the slow-moving Catholic procession.
Although Western Christians were celebrating Easter on Sunday, the Orthodox churches do not mark the festival until April 27.
The normally sombre interior was lit up by the hundreds of candles held up by the faithful and the constant flash of their cameras, as the chanting of dozens of white-cloaked seminarians echoed through the ancient walls.
At the entrance, dozens of nuns and shawled women kneeled and kissed the stone slab on which Jesus is believed to have been laid out and washed after his crucifixion and before his burial.
Sonya Sari, a 24-year-old woman leading a group of pilgrims from Jakarta, knelt at the slab with an elderly Indonesian couple before all three ran their hands along the stone warmed by centuries of supplications.
"It's amazing to be here," she said. "I know Jesus is alive. He forgives our sins so we can live in freedom."
After the procession circled the grotto on the site where Jesus is believed to have been buried, it marched outside into a limestone plaza bathed in the warm sunlight of a shimmering spring day.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, wearing a gold-embroidered mitre, oversaw the procession for the last time, following his retirement last week as the top Roman Catholic leader in the Holy Land at the age of 75.
His successor, Fuad Twal, 67, also assisted in the ceremony.
"It's great to be here," said Llewelyn Daniel, a retired post office worker who had come from London. "Everybody wants to be here this time of year."
After the service, the procession filed through the narrow streets of the Old City, past souvenir shops gleaming with icons and crucifixes and draped with colorful carpets and tapestries.
In the middle of the procession walked the Brothers of Krakow, the heirs of a mediaeval order of knights from Poland, wearing colourful regalia and fur hats with plumes of feathers.
"This is just to show that these guys believe in Christ," said Arthur Rodecki, a professor invited to travel with them.
"They are knights, but they are also professionals, or the owners of small or large factories. Most of them are rich guys," he added.
Jerusalem draws thousands of pilgrims for Easter each year.
On Friday psalms and incense filled the air as the faithful wept and prayed along the Via Dolorosa, or Way of Suffering, the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion.
In past years, the holidays have been a boon to local merchants, but many say the local economy has yet to fully recover from the 2000 Palestinian uprising, which temporarily decimated Israel's tourism industry.
Azmi al-Ayubi, 36, owns a large souvenir shop filled with Christian icons, crucifixes, and jewellery on the main route of the procession, but by midday he had only had a handful of customers.
"There are lots of tourists now but they all go through the Israeli travel offices," said Ayubi, a Palestinian Muslim. "They take them to specific places or they take them to Israeli shops. They don't give them free days."
By the time he finished speaking, the procession, with all its costumes and camera flashes had passed, and the streets had fallen quiet once more.
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