A drone's eye view of the Holy Land as Christians look to Easter
Seen from the air, the fragility of humanity as it must have been in the Holy Land in centuries past is plain to see - ancient monasteries clinging to precipices, tiny fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee, deserts gnawing at the edges of towns.
For the Christian faithful, the Biblical journey and legacy of Jesus are written in stonework and monuments across the landscape, straddling modern political faultlines.
But modern pandemics, like ancient plagues, are no respecters of political and belief systems. For a year the Christian sites of the Holy Land, like the sacred places of Judaism and Islam, were under varying degrees of lockdown or restriction, and bereft of foreign pilgrims.
Left: The Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth in northern Israel.
Right: Scouts take part in a Christian procession on the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation in Nazareth, northern Israel. This was the celebration of the announcement by the Archangel Gabriel to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus.
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But at the start of Holy Week, the huge medieval doors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre swung open to admit churchgoers.
On the spot in the southern courtyard where he had stood despondently a year earlier, a more upbeat, though still masked, Latin Patriarch emerged from the church flanked by Catholic clerics and worshippers before heading to the Mount of Olives for the traditional, albeit reduced, Palm Sunday procession.
"We feel more hopeful that things will become better," Pizzaballa said. "The message of Easter is life and love, despite all the signs of death, corona, pandemic, whatever, we believe in the power of love and life."
Fishing boats sail in the Sea of Galilee in northern Israel.
A man surfs on the Sea of Galilee.
A baptismal site known as Qasr el-Yahud on the River Jordan, near Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
A boy is washed during a baptism ceremony at the Jordan River, near Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Houses stand in Kafr Kana in northern Israel.
Father Simon Khoury looks out as he opens the door of a room under renovation at his church in Kafr Kana, in northern Israel.
Walls surround Jerusalem's Old City and The Dome of the Rock, located on the compound revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, in Jerusalem.
People pass two Stations of the Cross along the route of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem's Old City.
Snow falls over the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site (in the foreground) and the Dome of the Rock, located on the compound known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount (in the background) on Ash Wednesday, in Jerusalem.
A man looks up Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Street as snow falls on Ash Wednesday in Jerusalem's Old City.
