Nun embroiled in unorthodox confrontation

JERICHO, West Bank - Sister Maria, an American nun in a black habit, has not had a shower in 13 days. Holed up behind the iron gates of a Russian Orthodox monastery in Jericho, she has been manhandled by Russian monks, shadowed by Palestinian security guards and protected by American diplomats.

But Maria Stephanopoulos, sister of former White House aide George Stephanopoulos, is not about to vacate the premises. There are principles at stake in this bitterly fought battle over who owns the Jericho Garden Monastery, she said, adding: "I'm willing to stay here as long as it takes."

Sister Maria is in the midst of a Cold War-style standoff in the Middle East, a struggle between the "white" and "red" Russian Orthodox churches - the U.S.-based church and the Russian church. This fight is not so much over a building, but one over power and prestige, and has attracted the attention of the U.S. and Russian governments.

It is a strange place for Sister Maria, who, unlike her more famous sibling, elected to lead a life out of spotlight after she graduated from the University of Michigan.

She was reared as a Greek Orthodox - her father, the Rev. Robert Stephanopoulos, is dean of Holy Trinity Cathedral in New York, home parish of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. But there were no Greek Orthodox convents in the United States when Maria was ready to join, so she decided to train as a Russian Orthodox nun.

The transition was easy, her mother, Nikki, said, because worship in all branches of Orthodox Christianity is the same. The differences are ethnic and jurisdictional - different languages and different leaders. Last year, Maria took her final vows in the Russian Orthodox Church in exile and dropped her given name, Anastasia.

Help from brother?

Sister Maria says her brother has interceded on her behalf with the White House and its National Security Council, but George Stephanopoulos and the White House say the inquiries are for information only and not to influence policy. "We just wanted to make sure that our family has all the information we can get and that she's safe," said George Stephanopoulos, now a political analyst for ABC News.

Sister Maria's battleground now is a walled Russian Orthodox monastery near the center of Jericho, a sleepy sanctuary that once was a rest stop for pilgrims on their way to the Jordan River, where Jesus was baptized. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, the place has belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church in exile - the "whites," who are based in New York. But on Jan. 15, Palestinian Authority police raided the walled compound, evicted the three monks and two layworkers living there, and handed control of the place to clerics loyal to the Russian Orthodox church in Moscow - the "reds."

Palestinian security officials let it be known that they recognized the Moscow patriarchate as the official Russian Orthodox Church. Not coincidentally, they said, the Moscow patriarch, Alexei II, had visited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat just days earlier at Orthodox Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem.

Sister Maria, 40, a nun in the white Russian church, has been living in the Middle East for three years and since 1998 has run a Russian Orthodox girls school in the Palestinian town of Bethany. She happened to be driving near Jericho the day the monastery was seized. Reached on her cell phone, she slipped into the compound and made her way toward the 6th-century chapel to pray.

She did not get far. Russian monks from the red church blocked her way and dragged her off the premises as Palestinian police watched. "My prayer robe was on the ground, my sweater was pulled off," she said. "I couldn't breathe."

U.S. consul general helps

She was readmitted to the compound only after John Herbst, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, arrived on the scene. At that point, Palestinian police told her and another American nun, 35-year-old Xenia Cesena, that they could stay. They were brought food and told they could sleep in a damp shed on the property, under guard of the Palestinian police.

The dispute since has simmered inconclusively. A half-dozen Palestinian police officers patrol the grounds, armed with pistols and assault rifles. Nuns, priests and journalists who come to visit the two American nuns may speak to them only through the gates.

"In the first few days we were concerned the Russians were going to come here and just throw us out and that would be the end of the story," Sister Maria said. "They now realize that would not be a smart thing to do."

Red Russian monks also are installed at the site, and Sister Maria says they have been busy changing the locks on the doors. Russian diplomats appear at the site frequently on behalf of the official church in Moscow. U.S. consular officials also have visited periodically and, according to the State Department, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has raised the matter with Arafat.

The schism between the New York and Moscow patriarchates was triggered by the birth of Soviet communism. The Orthodox Church in exile continues to regard the Moscow church as subservient to the Kremlin - an assessment shared by many in Russia.

The Moscow patriarchate sees the church in exile as an illegitimate splinter group whose links to Russia are tenuous. In recent years, it has become clear that the Moscow headquarters covets churches and other Middle East properties that are controlled by the New York-based church.

In 1997, just days after a visit by Alexei II, the Moscow patriarch, Palestinian officials seized a white Russian monastery in Hebron and handed it over to the reds. Red Orthodox church officials in Jerusalem were unavailable for comment.

The roots of the dispute over Russian church property in the region reach back more than eight decades. The British, who assumed control of Palestine after World War I, awarded the churches, convents and monasteries to the white-Russian church. That policy was affirmed by Jordan, which took control of the West Bank after the first Israeli-Arab war, in 1948.

Israel took a different tack. Grateful to Moscow for its diplomatic recognition, the fledgling Jewish state initially turned over the Russian Orthodox properties under its control to Soviet authorities. But when it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, it left the sites there in the hands of the whites.

Arafat, who now controls the most populated parts of the West Bank, has not declared an official policy. But his actions suggest he is favoring Moscow, whose support he enjoyed for years as an anti-Israeli guerrilla leader.

Now, confronted with the standoff in Jericho and competing Russian and U.S. interests, the Palestinians are scrambling for solutions. Last weekend, Palestinian security officials suggested that the property could be shared equally by the two churches.