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Vatican silent as verdict triggers geopolitical tremorsISTANBUL (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a historic verdict, Turkey's top court has returned the world's greatest Byzantine basilica to its previous status as a mosque after it abolished President Atatürk's 1934 decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum. Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, reached a unanimous verdict declaring that president Kemal Atatürk's cabinet had no right to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum as part of his secularist reforms and has rendered the decision unlawful. The court is expected to deliver its judgment Friday, but Turkish journalist Mehmet Ardıç, a close...

In a “resounding” intervention with multidimensional nuances on the issue of Hagia Sophia, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called not to turn Hagia Sophia into a mosque. In a statement, Patriarch Kirill stressed his deep concern over the calls of certain Turkish politicians to reconsider the status of Hagia Sophia as a museum, “one of the greatest monuments of Christian culture.” He highlighted that there have been different, sometimes rather difficult periods in the history of relations between Rus’ and Constantinople. But “the Russian people responded in the past and respond now with bitterness and indignation to any attempt to degrade...