Religion: Galilee’s King

On the northern shore of Palestine’s Sea of Galilee lies Tabgha, one of the Holy Land’s lushest garden spots. Anciently, scholars believe, it was Bethsaida. It boasts a mosaic pavement and an altar stone, fragments of the Roman church of the Loaves & Fishes which was built to commemorate Christ’s miracle on the other side of the lake. To Tabgha in the past 30 years have gone tourists, British officials, archeologists, Bible students, to visit not the Roman relics but the big, blue-eyed, square-bearded monk who discovered them, Father John Tapper.

A Lazarist,* Father Täpper ran a hospice at Tabgha, in which a handful of monks and nuns gave visitors simple food, simple comfort. His friends called the jovial, pipe-smoking father the “King of Galilee.” The Arabs who worked for him and netted fish on his shores made him their sheik.

Palestine’s troubles this summer shattered the eucalyptus-shaded calm of Tabgha Hospice. Tourists kept away, and times became lean for businesslike Father Täpper. Worse, he had a cancer, was operated on at Tiberias. Last month Father Tapper made ready to retire to the land where he was born some 60 years ago. World War I he had escaped. Last week Father Täpper was due in Cologne, in his native Rhineland, to rest his old bones—just as the French and German guns began their restless muttering along the Western Front.

*The congregation of Priests of the Mission was founded by St. Vincent de Paul, great & good charitarian, at the Priory of St. Lazare in Paris.