Epress.am News from Armenia
The Greek Orthodox faithful flocked to the cliffside setting of Sumela monastery in northeast Turkey on Sunday after Ankara allowed mass to be celebrated here for the first time in 88 years, AFP reports.
“After 88 years, the tears of the Virgin Mary have stopped flowing,” the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, said during the service.
Greece’s Prime Minister George Papandreou, speaking after attending mass on the Cyclades Islands off the Greek mainland, welcomed the “historic and important event.”
It was a sign of bilateral rapprochement with Turkey and reflected “a spirit of cooperation and peace between us and our neighbour,” the prime minister said.
The site is of particular importance to Pontian Greeks, whose ancestors fled the region around the Black Sea during fighting after World War I and dispersed in Greece and Russia.
On Sunday, around 500 Pontians were allowed into the fourth-century monastery while around 2,000 others come from Istanbul, Greece, Russia and Georgia, watched the mass on a giant television screen outside.
Turkey in May sent a letter to the patriarch authorising mass to be celebrated here once a year on August 15.