Shafaq News/ Pope Francis said, Sunday, he was “very distressed” over Turkey’s decision to convert the Byzantine-era monument, Hagia Sophia, back into a mosque.
“My thoughts go to Istanbul. I’m thinking about Hagia Sophia. I am very distressed,” the pope said in the Vatican’s first reaction to a decision that has drawn international criticism, breaking his silence over the past two days.
A Turkish top court canceled a 1934 cabinet decision under modern Turkey’s secularizing founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to preserve the church-turned-mosque as a museum. Thereafter, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signed a decree announcing the reverting of Hagia Sophia to a mosque.
Hagia Sophia was first constructed as a cathedral in the Christian Byzantine empire but was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.