World Council of Churches “dismayed” at Hagia Sophia shift

FRANKFURT, Germany — The head of the World Council of Churches has written to Turkey’s president expressing his “grief and dismay” over the decision to change the status of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.

As a World Heritage museum, “Hagia Sophia has been a place of openness, encounter and inspiration for people from all nations,” interim secretary general Ioan Sauca said in the letter released Saturday by the Geneva-based group.

The colossal Hagia Sophia was built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral and was converted into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 1453. The secular Turkish government decided in 1934 to make it a museum, and millions of tourists now visit the landmark annually.