Turkey told to return ancient church

Wednesday, 7th May 2008
By: George Conger

ROMAN CATHOLIC leaders will support mosque building in Germany, if the Turkish government returns the Church of St Paul in Tarsus to church control and permits the construction of a pilgrimage centre.

Writing in his diocesan newspaper, the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, said he had written to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urging his government return the church, built on the site of St Paul’s birthplace, as a gesture of European cooperation.

Confiscated by the Turkish government following the expulsion of Christians from Asia Minor in the 1920s, the Church of St Paul was used as an army warehouse for 70 years, until it was turned into a museum. Originally an Armenian Church, it became a Byzantine church in the early Middle Ages. the rest