The Eponymous Flower: Istanbul (kath.net/KNA) The Hagia Sofia of Nicaea, the meeting place of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the year 787 is to be declared a mosque by the Turkish authorities. As the Turkish press reported last Thursday, the call to prayer of the Muezzins is being sung for the first time that eve since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The minaret was attached during the Ottoman period to the Church in the city the Turks call Iznik. Last year it was restored. With the celebratory prayer at the beginning of the Islamic sacrificial feast on Sunday morning, it will free the former church for Islamic religious ceremonies. Read more here.
