Mass held in abandoned church after Turkey earthquake

Just hours before a deadly 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey’s southeast Oct. 23, well over 3,000 visitors crowded into an ancient Armenian cathedral in nearby Diyarbakir for Sunday Mass.

The Mass was the first worship service in decades in the ancient St. Giragos Armenian Apostolic Church, which had fallen into serious disrepair in the early 1980s.

Built 350 years ago and still the largest Armenian church building in the Middle East, it once served as the metropolitan cathedral of Diyarbakir. In a private ceremony the following day, 10 ethnic Armenians who had been raised as Sunni Muslims were baptized as Christians in the restored sanctuary. St. Giragos was virtually abandoned after the massacre and deportation of its congregants in 1915. The building was confiscated during World War I as a headquarters for German army officers, used for a time as a stable and later turned into a cotton warehouse in the 1960s.

According to Taraf newspaper columnist Markar Esayan, the church building was still intact until 1980, after which “because of hate … in modern times” it was attacked, looted and fell into disrepair, with just the walls and arched columns remaining. Costing $3.5 million, the church’s two-year restoration project was funded largely by Armenian donations from Istanbul and abroad, although a third of the costs were donated by the Diyarbakir municipality.

At the conclusion of the Sunday Mass, Diyarbakir Mayor Osman Baydemir addressed the congregation, declaring first in Armenian, and then Kurdish, Turkish, English and Arabic: “Welcome to your home. You are not guests here; this is your home.”  (CDN)