A new declaration (18.7.2020 Ta Nea) of Archbishop Anastasios* about Hagia Sophia
A specific insult against both Christianity and Islam.
The stubborn decision of Turkey about the Hagia Sophia is not only a kind of cultural “jihad” (holy war), especially today when any type of jihadist is condemned internationally, but constitutes a specific insult against both Christianity and Islam.
They made a mosque ofthe marvelous Church of the undivided Christianity and they strive to cover her sublime face and to deface her marvelous icons, her expressive eyes. Furthermore, they inaugurate a peculiar, for classical Islam, type of mosquewith her Christian iconsveiled, which in their “eloquent silence” do not cease to give witness to the Christian truth. I do not know if there is a similar Islamic place of prayer in the world.
The intransigenceof the Turkish authorities underlines what we have emphasized during the last decades: Violence in the name of religion violates the holiness of Religion itself. And no one, no matter how powerful and great he fancies himself, is entitled to disregard this panhuman truth.
*His Beatitude Archbishop of Tirana, Durres, and All Albania, Anastasios, is an Honorary Member of the Academy of Athens, Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions at the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, and Honorary President of the “World Conference of Religions for Peace”
