Saint Helena dug it up!

I had never heard of St Helena before I went to Jerusalem, but now I think she's my favourite saint, mainly because of her oodles of chutzpah.  

Helena was the mother of Constantine the Great.  She had to fend for herself quite a bit, as his father traded her in for a newer model, but she wasn't one to let that set her back.  She outlived her ex, and, at the ripe old age of 80, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  While she was there, she discovered some of the most significant sites of Christendom, and ensured that any non-Christian buildings erected over them were pulled down and replaced with churches.  Whether this was the result of a hotline to God, an early dose of Jerusalem Syndrome or a canny political sense of how to secure Christianity's hold in the Middle East, we must be grateful to St Helena for ensuring we know today exactly where Jesus was born, crucified and buried. (Anyone who entertains doubts about whether Joseph of Arimathea would really have sited his posh tomb a few yards from where the Romans were busily crucifying people should keep quiet.  Helena knew these things!)

She was a stickler for scientific proof too - she found three crosses at Golgotha and established which one was the Holy Cross using scientific testing.  A dying old woman remained sick after touching two of them, but miraculously recovered on touching the third.

So three cheers for St Helena!  Without her millions of people would not have known where to prostrate themselves, and the priests of the Orthodox, Armenian, Latin, Ethiopian and Coptic churches would have had to find somewhere else to fight.  Apparently they find it hard to agree on how to prepare for Christmas in Bethlehem, let alone who should pay for repairs to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

I wonder what Helena would have thought of that?