The newly re-elected president of the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, Russian lawmaker Sergey Gavrilov, this week bitterly criticized the Turkish state’s conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque, as well as what he called Turkish provocations.
Gavrilov spoke during the group’s general assembly, which was conducted via teleconference.
Moreover, an epistle by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, His Holiness Kirill, was read out during the general assembly, with the Russian Patriarch noting that “…our divisiveness has often prevented Orthodox civilization from providing a unified answer to the serious challenges of our era. A clear example of this is the situation related to the decision by Turkish authorities to change the status of the Church of the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople”.