Over the recent Corpus Christi weekend, I had an opportunity to accompany a buddy of mine on a whirlwind, three- and-a-half-day trip to Istanbul, Turkey, where the wonderful beauty, charm, culture, and friendly, pious people that make up this ancient city, famously once known and established by Roman emperor Constantine the Great as Constantinople, left a lasting impression on me — the over 900 photos and six videos in my phone from Istanbul lay claim to this.
It has been six months since Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan turned the UNESCO world heritage site Hagia Sophia (the cathedral built by Emperor Justinian I in 532) into a mosque and four months since he made a similar conversion of the historic Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora.
For more than eight decades, the Hagia Sophia museum was a center for Christian-Islam heritage that attracted millions of tourists every year.
