"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," Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Ieronymos
said on Tuesday, in a statement to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency
(ANA) regarding the use of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul as a mosque on July
24.
According to the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, "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."
"The great church of Hagia Sophia is made a plaything in the hands of people, who habitually and through the ages, trample on international law and human rights and feed the darker form of religious intolerance in order, as they think, to establish their dominance," he added.
The archbishop ended his statement by announcing that on July 24, which he described as a day of mourning for Christians and Greek people everywhere, he will perform the customary Good Friday liturgy and hymns at the Athens Cathedral and invited everyone to join in the prayers for aid and support to the nation.