Churches mourn for Hagia Sophia plight

ATHENS: Churches around Greece were in “mourning” yesterday as Muslim prayers were to be held at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul for the first time in decades, with protests by religious groups later in the day.

Church bells around the country pealed at midday with their flags at half-mast to protest what the head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Ieronymos, has called an “unholy act of defiling” the former Byzantine Empire cathedral.

“[Today] is a day of mourning for all of... Christianity,” Archbishop Ieronymos said.

Hagia Sophia is “a symbol of our faith and a universal monument of culture”, Archbishop Ieronymos said.

Religious and nationalist groups planned for protests in Athens and Thessaloniki later in the day.

One of the architectural wonders of the world, the Unesco World Heritage site in Istanbul was the main cathedral of the Byzantine Empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

A top Turkish court revoked the sixth-century monument’s status as a museum on July 10, 2020. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan then ordered the building to reopen for Muslim worship, deeply angering the Christian community and further straining relations with Nato ally Greece.

Mr Erdogan went ahead with the plan despite appeals from the United States and Russia and condemnation by France and Pope Francis.

Greece’s culture ministry has called it “a provocation to the civilised world”.

The Hagia Sophia in 2007 was on a shortlist of global architectural wonders selected by nearly 100 million internet and telephone voters.

REUTERS A man waits for the beginning of prayers outside the Hagia Sophia, marking the first time the architectural wonder has been declared a mosque, and not a museum or Byzantine Cathedral, after 86 years, in Istanbul, Turkey.