Story:
Where is the Church headed ?
Very splendid, and very controversial too, since an organisation as thrifty and modest as the Scottish Kirk would not normally be expected to spend £13 million ($20m) building a luxury hotel.
It also happens to be situated in one of the world’s hotspots – northern Israel, not far from Syria and Lebanon, in the town of Tiberias, which only a few years ago came under rocket attack.
So who is the Scots Hotel for, and why does the Church own it?
It all started back in the 1880s, when a group of Scottish missionaries led by a surgeon, Dr David Watt Torrance, came to the Holy Land to preach, convert, and heal. Torrance built a hospital in Tiberias which served patients from as far away as Damascus.
Find out more
- A Scottish Hotel In The Holy Land will be broadcast on Wednesday 31 October at 11:00 GMT on BBC Radio 4
After the new Israeli state built its own hospital in the region in 1959, the three buildings housing the Scottish one were converted into a hospice for pilgrims, and then a modest guesthouse, owned by the Church of Scotland.
By the 1990s, the guesthouse was crumbling due to lack of investment, and the Church faced a dilemma. Sell it – and its beautiful grounds by the Sea of Galilee, including a little cemetery where Dr Torrance and his family are buried – or invest in it.
Expert advice suggested that the best way of recouping any investment would be to turn it into top-class hotel, which might not only pay its own way but even generate profits for the Church’s good causes around the world.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20126585
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