ROY - Who actually owns the Garden Of Gethsemane ?

JOEL - You mean besides God?
Actually there are as many as four different sites that different religions claim to be the Garden of Gethsemane. The most widely accepted site, and the most popular, is outside the east wall of Jerusalem, at the base of the Mt of Olives, surrounding the Franciscan Catholic “Church of All Nations”. Most pilgrims visiting Jerusalem are shown this little garden on a hillside which is tended by Franciscan friars. A small natural cave nearby which may have contained an olive press, is believed to be the site where the apostles waited while Jesus prayed and where he was betrayed by Judas. The “Church of All Nations”(Catholics from several nations contributed to its construction), also called Basilica of the Agony, enshrines a section of bedrock identified as the place where Jesus prayed alone in the garden on the night of his arrest. Although it is not certain that this is the exact spot, the setting does fit the Gospel description, and the present church, rests on the foundations of two earlier shrines: a 12th-century Crusader chapel, abandoned in 1345; and a 4th-century Byzantine basilica, destroyed by the earthquake in 746.

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