Word: hagia
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Turkish citizen again, Athenagoras has worked hard to make friends with Turkey's leading politicians. He visited the Turkish director of the Hagia Sophia Museum-the first time an Ecumenical Patriarch had set foot within that 6th century shrine of Christendom since it was captured by the Turks in 1453. This was his "wordless answer" to both the extreme Moslems who want it converted to a mosque and the extreme Orthodox who clamor for its reconversion to a church. To newsmen who plagued him for an explanation, he said: "In the time of Byzantium, Hagia Sophia was open...
...Saint Sophia is not named for a saint; the words are a liberal translation of Hagia Sophia, Greek for "Holy Wisdom...