Oldest Christian Monastery at Risk

A. Papapostolou Source: ANSA 12/7/2012 The Mongolians failed to destroy it 700 years ago despite the massacre of 40 friars and 400 Christians. Yet the existence of the oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, the fifth century Mor Gabriel Monastery in the Tur Abdin plane (“the mountain of God’s servants”) near the Turkish-Syrian border, is at risk after a ruling by Turkey’s highest appeals court in Ankara.