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Thought you might be interested.

Very interesting article.

Firstly, as I said -- the question of theft is debatable, especially after 1000years -- the sailors argued they were protecting the relics from the Muslim hordes. And would you have disputed that in the 11th century knowing what the Muslims had done to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem?

Everyone KNEW the Muslims were iconoclasts -- there was no saying what they could or would have done to Christian Churches. Look at what they did to Christian Churches in Yemen centuries earlier and to Christians in the northern parts of the ARabian peninsula

Secondly, and more importantly -- have the relics not been maintained properly and safely in Bari?

Yes or no?

And, if you want them returned to any place, why should they go to Moscow???? If they create a Christian state of Antioch including Myra and build a Church there, I, personally, would agree that the relics should go there.

In the absence of that, Bari is as good a place as Mt Athos and far better than Moscow.

Absolute nonsense. The Eastern Romans were very proud that they were part of an Hellenic culture and Myra was a Lycian city populated virtually 100% with ethnic Greeks in +Nicholas’ time, as it remained until the 1920s.

Lycia was founded by the Hittites. It became Hellenic when it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 324 BC, and then Roman when made a province in 46 AD. It had Hellenic culture, but a mix of Hellenic and Roman Culture. They did not call themselves Greeks but Romans -- even the Byzantines called themselves Romaoi -- even the Turks when they conquered Anatolia called it the Sultanate of the Rum (Rome).

They would not have been 100% Ethnic Greeks for the simple reason that a cosmopolitan city in the East would naturally have a large component of people from Syria, from Armenia and the Caucasus, from Italia, from Egypt and North Africa.

Furthermore, while you can argue that these were largely CULTURALLY Hellenic, there were definitely not ETHNICALLY 100% Hellene.

Quite right. The article talks of the life of St. Nicholas who is revered in both East and West. Why do you read so much that isn't there? So it says Turkish saint -- St. Francis is called an Italian saint though Italy never existed for 500 years after his death -- Mother Teresa is called an Indian saint though she was of Albanian ethnicity born in what is now Bosnia but was then Austria-Hungarian

Calling him "Turkish" or "Earthling" does not in anyway diminish the man or limit him to one place.