On September 9, 2025, a room inside Jerusalem’s Franciscan Monastery of St. Saviour became a time machine of sorts. Spanish researcher and organist David Catalunya drew breath through 11th-century bronze pipes and let a medieval chant, Benedicamus Domino Flos Filius, bloom once more. As OSV News journalist Judith Sudilovsky put it, “after 800 years of silence, the pipes played again.”
The story behind those 222 pipes reads like a prayer hidden in the ground. Originally crafted in France in the 11th century and later carried to the Holy Land by Crusaders, the instrument most likely sounded in the Church of the Nativity’s chancel in Bethlehem.
When war threatened in 1244, Franciscans dismantled the organ and buried its metal heart — along with bells and liturgical objects — to keep it safe. Centuries passed.
In 1906, during work near the Church of the Nativity, the cache surfaced, but its importance would go largely unnoticed until Catalunya’s recent, painstaking research confirmed what the faithful once knew: this was no ordinary organ.
At the press presentation, 16 carefully selected pipes — six of them original — were set on a custom wind chest built by master organ maker Winold van der Putten. The sound startled ears accustomed to modern organs. With an astonishing 18 pipes per note (today’s instruments often use five or six), the timbre arrived as a layered, shimmering color rather than a single, polished tone. “It’s very, very like celestial music,” Catalunya said.
Sudilovsky reports that he likened the moment to “opening the tomb of a pharaoh,” the ancient voice intact.
This “Bethlehem Organ,” as the team calls it, was preserved by time, climate, and craft. Original markings still etched on the metal guided scholars in fabricating faithful reproductions; more than 5,000 measurements helped reconstruct the organ case.
Koos van de Linde, a leading organ historian, called it “a great honor … to be involved in that resurrection,” a word that, in this context, is both historical and hopeful.
Protecting human dignity
Why does this matter beyond the music world? Because sacred art is never just ornament. The Catechism calls the Church’s musical tradition “a treasure of inestimable value” (CCC 1156). When sound serves prayer, it teaches, heals, and holds memory. Even for readers who don’t attend church, the revival of a thousand-year-old instrument reveals how communities protect what dignifies human life — beauty offered freely, across borders and centuries.
The project — led by the Complutense Institute of Musical Sciences (Madrid) with the Franciscan Terra Sancta Museum and the Custody of the Holy Land — now moves to its next step: building a full replica so listeners can encounter the organ’s complete voice.
According to Sudilovsky, the original pipes and a reconstructed case will be displayed in the future Terra Sancta Museum’s Music Cloister, with additional replicas planned for Bethlehem and Europe.
For pilgrims, scholars, and the simply curious, this is a gift: an ancient instrument returning to service, not as a relic but as a teacher.
Van der Putten described his craft humbly: the restorer must “put the material in front and listen.”
It’s wise counsel for anyone seeking God — or meaning — in a noisy age. In Jerusalem, the oldest organ in Christendom has started to speak again. Thanks to the Franciscans’ guardianship and the researchers’ care — and, as Judith Sudilovsky’s reporting makes clear, a dash of providence — its song belongs to all of us.
