Here is what the Patriarch meant to say apparently ... from http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/ethiopian-ark-of-the-covenant-not-to-be-revealed-after-all/
I am not here to give proofs that the Ark is in Ethiopia, but I am here to say what I saw, what I know and I can attest to. I didn’t say that the Ark would be revealed to the world. It is a mystery, an object of veneration
That's the problem with living in a bubble.
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality 
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."