Byzantine era icons in the interior of the Church of the Holy Savior in Istanbul. / Credit: Shutterstock
ACI MENA, Feb 13, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).
After serving as a museum for more than 79 years, the Turkish government is proceeding with plans to make the Church of the Holy Savior in Istanbul a mosque.
Mirroring the 2020 reversion of the Hagia Sophia, prayers and Islamic rites will be performed once again in the ancient church, according to Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies.
The Church of the Holy Savior, also known as Chora Church, is recognized as one of the most important Byzantine gems in the world and is adorned with many unique icons and frescoes.
Turkish media, particularly the Islamist daily Yeni Şafak, initially reported the mosque would reopen for Islamic prayers on Feb. 23, 2023. However, the Turkish Directorate General of Institutions within the government’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism denied the report, affirming that the opening date remains unannounced.
The museum-to-mosque conversion project began in 2020, with plans to implement it by October of that year. Restoration work delayed the project. According to Turkish media, this long-running initiative, dubbed the “Kariye Mosque,” has finally come to fruition.
The Church of the Holy Savior in Chora in Istanbul, Turkey. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Sitting in the northeast of Istanbul’s historic center near Adrianople Byzantine Gate, the Church of the Holy Savior was built in the 12th century and restored in the early 14th century. After the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottomans kept the building as is until its conversion to a mosque in 1511. At that time, the magnificent frescoes and icons were completely plastered over.
At the end of World War II, archeologists and historians uncovered the long-hidden masterpieces on the walls. In 1945, the building became a museum and religious practices inside were banned.
However, in August 2020, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reversed the 1958 decision that established the museum, paving the way for its return to an Islamic place of worship.
This story was first published by ACI Mena, CNA’s Arabic-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Mother Elvira, the founder of the Comunità Cenacolo, based her efforts to help young people struggling with addiction around the concept of radical trust in God’s mercy and providence. / Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
National Catholic Register, Aug 5, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Mother Elvira Petrozzi, who founded Comunità Cenacolo in 1983 to provide hope and healing to those suffering from addiction, died on Aug. 3 in the formation house and residence of her congregation in Saluzzo, Italy. She was 86.
Her death, following a long illness, came just weeks after thousands of people gathered in Saluzzo, a hilltop town in Italy’s northwest Piedmont region about an hour’s drive south of Turin, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cenacolo Community’s founding there in an abandoned home on July 16, 1983.
In the decades since, the community has grown to encompass 72 Cenacolo houses in 20 countries, including four in the United States.
Mother Elvira called the Cenacolo a “School of Life” because it took people off the streets and gave them a “rebirth” that was “based on a simple, family-oriented, orderly life” with the foundation of prayer, physical labor, discipline, and fraternal sharing.
“How could I invent a story like this? Everything happened without me even realizing it,” she once remarked.
“I dove into God’s mercy and I rolled up my sleeves to love, love, love … and serve!” she said. “I am the first to surprise myself with what has happened and what is happening in the life of the Cenacolo Community. It’s a work of God, the Holy Spirit, and of Mary.”
Bishop Robert Baker, bishop emeritus of Birmingham, Alabama, first met Mother Elvira in 1991. The two developed a close friendship and together they co-founded four Comunità Cenacolos in the U.S. Southwest, including one near Hanceville, Alabama.
Baker was among Mother Elvira’s many friends, supporters, and community members who were able to visit with her in her final days.
“I had the blessing of being invited to come to be at her bedside,” he told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s partner news outlet. “I was with her and I was able to give her a blessing.”
Humble beginnings
Born Rita Petrozzi, Mother Elvira was born in Sora, Italy, in 1937 and grew up in a poor family, taking the name Elvira upon entering the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide Thouret as a teenager.
It wasn’t until 27 years later that she felt inspired to help young addicts and other youth to change their lives. Rooted in her Catholic faith and God’s love for every person, her methods were so effective that they led to others wanting a Comunità Cenacolo established in their region.
Prior to meeting her, Baker founded a drug addiction center called Our Lady of Hope Community in St. Augustine, Florida. Then visiting Rome when he was rector of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, he learned of Mother Elvira, spoke with her, and at his invitation agreed to establish a Cenacolo community with her entire program at Our Lady of Hope in 1992. The two friends went on to co-found two other houses in the St. Augustine area and a fourth house in Alabama.
Baker celebrated one of the Masses for the thousands of people attending the 40th anniversary celebration in Saluzzo. In his homily, he reflected on the time when he arranged to use an ornamental nursery to raise funds for the Cenacolo program in Florida, but when community members arrived from Italy they explained that Mother Elvira had instructed them to rely instead on divine providence.
“It was the result of her own closeness to the Lord in the Eucharist, which enabled her to see the immensity of God’s love. And if God loves us so immensely, he will provide for us,” he said.
After 30 years, no one has gone hungry in that Florida house or any of the community’s houses. “The point being, she was right,” Baker said.
Mother Elvira, who died on Aug. 3, 2023, at age 86, was beloved for her infectious trust in God’s providence, her devotion to the Eucharist, and her burning desire to share God’s boundless love with those struggling in life. Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
The daily schedule at these houses includes Mass, eucharistic adoration, Marian devotion with three rosaries minimum a day, and devotion to St. Joseph. Every day members pray simply: “St. Joseph, provide for us.”
“The heart of it is, of course, the Eucharist,” Baker explained.
“Part of Elvira’s training is to divest to get rid of the stuff you don’t need,” he said. “So, the divesting, the trust in divine providence, and then … the Eucharist, praying before the Lord. That’s where her greatest strength was — the Eucharist, where she had all these insights. [You] have to have the sense of God’s immense love, which she had from praying before the Eucharist. And then because you know God loves you immensely, he will provide for you.”
When Baker visited Mother Elvira shortly before her death, he noted upon entering the house a mosaic on the floor that spells out the words “Dio Provvede” (God Provides).
‘Consumed with God’s love’
Florida residents Sean and Elaine Corrigan, who met Mother Elvira in 2000, lived in her community for some time and served in its missions in Brazil.
The couple credits her for saving their marriage.
“She had an extraordinary impact on our lives and on our marriage,” Elaine Corrigan told the Register. “Mother Elvira was a person fully in love with her Savior. She knew, she accepted, and she believed completely in his merciful love, and her great desire was to share him with others.
“I wanted to run after her and soak up all that she had,” she continued. “When we met Mother Elvira, we knew we had encountered a woman completely consumed with the love of God. She knew in the core of her being that he could and would heal people. She shared this hope and mercy with everyone she met.”
Albino Aragno, who started with the Cenacolo more than 30 years ago and today is the director of Comunità Cenacolo America, said Mother Elvira taught him many valuable lessons.
“Mother Elvira always encouraged me. She reminded me that life is precious and that life needs to be lived fully … to never be afraid to do God’s will, and always trust in him,” he said.
“Because of this, I can say that in all these years I can see that our community has kept on going even through so many difficulties, because good always prevails!”
Albino’s wife, Joyce, said Mother Elvira had a profound effect on her from the very beginning.
“Mother Elvira said, ‘Lord, let me know your will in the moment you want me to do it.’ This pierced my heart the first time I heard it and moved me to try to live every moment of my life in surrender and abandonment to his will, as Jesus reveals it at that moment,” she explained.
“It’s so radically opposed to control and trusting ‘in my own understanding,’ as the Psalmist says — my own intellect, perception, and analysis. Jesus calls me to live totally in the moment, not depending on myself.”
Pope Francis paid tribute to the Comunità Cenacolo on its 40th anniversary following his July 16 Angelus reflection.
“I send my heartfelt greeting to the Cenacolo Community, which has been a place of hospitality and human promotion for 40 years,” the pope said. “I bless Mother Elvira, the bishop of Saluzzo, and all the fraternity and friends. What you do is good, and it is good that you exist! Thank you!”
Baker said he observed during a recent Mass how “in periods of the Church there are great saints that get us through the eras in which we live.”
He pointed to St. Benedict in the fourth century, the Dominicans and Franciscans in the 13th century during the Albigensian heresy, and St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in the 16th century at the time of the Reformation.
On Jan. 25, 2023, 60 youth and 24 adults, including Bishop Christian Carlassare (center) and Sister Orla Treacy (right) started on a nine-day, 255-mile pilgrimage from Rumbek to Juba, South Sudan for Pope Francis’ Feb. 3-5 visit. / Credit: Siste… […]
Canon Dominique Aubert, rector of Chartres Cathedral, France, celebrating the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite. / Maxime800 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
The mosaics in this church are among the most important surviving pieces of Byzantine art–cited in innumerable reference books. Just as in “taking back” Hagia Sophia, the current regime in Turkey is hell-bent on extinguishing the nation’s Christian past, for political advantage. Don’t expect any foreign criticism of this cultural vandalism.
Turkey has been moving towards Islamic fundamentalism for many years now. Sad. Since the rise of Islam means destruction of any non-muslim art, expect these priceless works of art to be destroyed. Intelligent Christians in both the US and Europe should avoid travel and vacations to Turkey. Travel there helps support this religious intolerance with tourism dollars. Say ‘No” to Turkey.
In 1453 the Ottomans covered the mosaics in Hagia Sophia church with whitewash except for the prominent angel mosaics in order to turn it into a mosque. The whitewashed mosaics were uncovered when it became a museum in the 1920s under the Republic. Since Hagia Sophia was recently changed from a museum to a mosque, what has happened to the angels and other mosaics? That may tell us what will happen to the beautiful Chora church.
The mosaics in this church are among the most important surviving pieces of Byzantine art–cited in innumerable reference books. Just as in “taking back” Hagia Sophia, the current regime in Turkey is hell-bent on extinguishing the nation’s Christian past, for political advantage. Don’t expect any foreign criticism of this cultural vandalism.
Another wonder from the “religion of peace”
Turkey has been moving towards Islamic fundamentalism for many years now. Sad. Since the rise of Islam means destruction of any non-muslim art, expect these priceless works of art to be destroyed. Intelligent Christians in both the US and Europe should avoid travel and vacations to Turkey. Travel there helps support this religious intolerance with tourism dollars. Say ‘No” to Turkey.
In 1453 the Ottomans covered the mosaics in Hagia Sophia church with whitewash except for the prominent angel mosaics in order to turn it into a mosque. The whitewashed mosaics were uncovered when it became a museum in the 1920s under the Republic. Since Hagia Sophia was recently changed from a museum to a mosque, what has happened to the angels and other mosaics? That may tell us what will happen to the beautiful Chora church.
Islam is always and everywhere martial and imperial.