Cross installed on ancient Armenian Church in Turkey
ANKARA – Agence France-Presse
Workers installed a cross atop an ancient Armenian church in eastern Turkey on Saturday at the site of a recent landmark religious rite that was aimed as a gesture of goodwill toward Yerevan.
The Sept. 19 service at the Surp Haç Church in Van province drew roughly 1,000 worshippers but was boycotted by the Armenian Apostolic Church because Turkey had failed to put the cross in place in time for the ceremony.
Turkish officials had said at the time that the delay was due to bureaucratic procedures for any work done on the building, which is listed as a historical monument.
Following the completion of the bureaucratic procedures, workers hoisted the two-meter-high cast-iron cross, weighing about 110 kilograms, onto the dome after it was blessed by clergy from the Istanbul-based Armenian patriarchate, the spiritual leader of Turkey’s 70,000-strong Armenian community, Anatolia news agency reported.
The mass at the 10th-century church was the first to be held on the island since the World War I-era 95 years.
On Friday, hundreds of Turks prayed at the Ani ruins in the eastern province of Kars at the call of the country’s largest nationalist party. The Friday prayers, which were held at an Armenian cathedral that was converted into a mosque in 1054, were largely seen as a response to the Sept. 19 church service.
The event drew condemnation Saturday from the Holy See of Etchmiadzin, the seat of the Armenian Apostolic Church, as a “political provocation.”
It’s bad enough that the Islamic state of turkey refused to place the cross in time for the historic liturgy (which was an insincere gesture simply for political purposes…..this church should not be a museum and liturgy should be celebrated at will and church returned to Armenian Patriarchate). The second insult was to place an islamic national flag on the church. It is clear the Golden Rule is not mandated by the Koran.