A court in the city of Samsun in 2018 may have blocked plans by Turkey’s commission for the protection of monuments to reconvert the historic Orthodox cathedral back into a mosque, nevertheless once an ongoing renovation project is completed, Muslim worshippers will again be allowed to pray freely inside Trabzon’s Hagia Sophia.
According to the Turkish mass daily Sabah, frescoes that were uncovered and preserved through painstaking work by a team of art conservationists and researchers from the University of Edinburgh will be “covered up in order to…not offend Muslim worshippers”.
Elsewhere, and on a positive note, a celebratory Divine Liturgy for the veneration of Sts. Constantine and Helen – whose Feast Day is on Tuesday, May 21 – was held at the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Cairo, with the Metropolitan of Memphis, His Eminence Nicodimos presiding.
