Pope Francis reported on Sunday he was harm by Turkey’s final decision to make Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia museum a mosque, the most recent spiritual chief to condemn the move. “My thoughts go to Istanbul. I assume of Santa Sophia and I am really pained,” he explained during his weekly blessing in St. Peter’s Square.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has reported the 1st prayers would be held in Hagia Sophia on July 24, just after declaring the historic monument was as soon as once again a mosque pursuing a court docket ruling revoking its standing as a museum.

The Planet Council of Church buildings has called on Erdogan to reverse his determination and Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-dependent religious chief of the world’s Orthodox Christians, known as it disappointing.

Erdogan said the virtually 1,500-year-outdated Hagia Sophia, which was after a Christian cathedral, would keep on being open up to Muslims, Christians and foreigners.

He extra that Turkey had exercised its sovereign appropriate in changing it to a mosque and would interpret criticism of the shift as an assault on its independence.

Greece has condemned the move and UNESCO claimed its Environment Heritage Committee would evaluation Hagia Sophia’s standing and that Turkey’s decision elevated queries about the impression on its universal price as a web page of great importance transcending borders and generations.