Several years ago, my wife and I made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. When we got off the bus at the Western Wall to pray, a woman stopped us and told us we had to either take off our religious medals and crosses or put them inside our shirts. My wife, wearing a small cross and Miraculous Medal around her neck, was upset. She showed the woman her medal and said, “See this? This is my Jewish mother.” The woman let her pass.

So when I read this news today, about a similar incident recently, I wasn’t at all surprised:

Leaders of Ireland’s main Christian churches were barred from praying at Jerusalem’s Western Wall Thursday because they refused to remove the crosses they were wearing.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Sean Brady, Church of Ireland Archbishop Alan Harper and Presbyterian and Methodist Moderators John Finlay and Roy Cooper arrived at the wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, without giving prior notice to Israeli authorities, Brady told the Irish broadcast network RTE.

“We encountered some difficulty in gaining access. There was a difficulty about us wearing our crosses,” he said. “We were under constraints of time … and we decided to move on.”

Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said that while the site is open to all faiths, worshippers are expected not to offend the sensitivities of Jews by displaying symbols of other religions.

“They were asked to remove the crosses, but they refused,” he told The Associated Press. “I think it is important that they visit the Western Wall, but they should have covered up the crosses to respect the place, just like Jews wouldn’t wear their ritual prayer shawls when entering a Christian holy place.”

The prelates are on a four-day visit to Israel and the West Bank to promote peace and show solidarity with Christians in the Holy Land, a statement from Ireland’s Catholic Communications Office said.

The Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, is a remnant of the Second Temple compound built by King Herod in the 6th century B.C. and destroyed by Roman conquerors in A.D. 70.

Israelis on Thursday were observing an annual day of remembrance and mourning for the 6 million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.

On a historic visit in 2000, Pope John Paul II prayed at the Western Wall, and pictures clearly show the pontiff wearing a large gold cross while praying there. He was accompanied by Michael Melchior, an orthodox rabbi who was an Israeli Cabinet minister at the time.

However, 13 visiting Austrian bishops who tried to pray at the wall last December while wearing crosses were made to stand behind a fence several yards from the ancient site.