Archbishop Ieronymos says July 24 will be a ‘day of mourning’

Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos described July 24, when Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia will open for worship as a mosque, as a “day of mourning” for Christians and invited the faithful to a service on the same day in Athens’ Cathedral.

“I am deeply grieved that the powerful of this world, at least the majority of them, are hiding behind their finger, or rather behind their own geopolitical and geostrategic designs,” he was quoted as saying to state-run news agency ANA-MPA on Tuesday.

“With this attitude they are tolerating, or essentially accepting, in contravention of all sense of international legality, an unholy act of sacrilege of not just a holy spiritual centre for our Orthodox faith, of Christianity in general, and of a symbol of our faith but of an ecumenical cultural monument and symbol of the mutual rapprochement of peoples and human beings, of people with different religious identities.”