'Twas ever thus...

“We would take people, put a small boat in the river and bless them right there in the middle,” said 69-year-old Mr. Yerezian, the director of real estate at the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem. “It was easier then.”
Such free access to the site where St. John the Baptist is said to have baptized Jesus more than 2,000 years ago has been rare in the 50 years since Mr. Yerezian was a teenage clergyman.