The Church of Agia Sophia -- Holy Wisdom -- in Constantinople.<\/p><\/div>Members of the \u201cInternational Congregation of Agia Sophia\u201d will make a pilgrimage to Agia Sofia in Istanbul in order to conduct mass on September 17, the day the Orthodox Church celebrates the holy feast day of Sophia, Faith, Hope and Love.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During a press conference in Thessaloniki, the President of the International Congregation, Chris Spirou, said that the Prime Minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, has already been informed in writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe purpose of our Congregation\u2019s visit is to conduct Holy Liturgy Services in the the Great Church of Christianity, the Symbol of the Orthodox Christian Faith\u201d, was written in the letter. After he was asked, whether the Greek Department of Foreign Affairs has been notified about this, Mr. Spirou said that it isn\u2019t a political issue and that \u201cno government has the right to interfere with religion and to appoint religious leaders\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u201cInternational Congregation of Agia Sophia\u201d was founded in 2005 and is a USA-based non-profit organization. Its purpose is to restore the Agia Sophia as a place of worship. The organisation\u2019s thousands of members worldwide include followers of other religions and denominations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H\/T: St. George Greek Orthodox Church Source: Greek Star Greek \u2013 Americans will conduct mass at Agia Sophia on September 17, 2010 By Kleo Mavridis Members of the \u201cInternational Congregation of Agia Sophia\u201d will make a pilgrimage to Agia Sofia in Istanbul in order to conduct mass on September 17, the day the Orthodox Church […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[610,296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6634"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6643,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions\/6643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}