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		</div><p>The World Council of Churches has written to Turkey’s president expressing “grief and dismay” over the decision to change the status of Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.</p>
<p>Interim secretary general of the council Ioan Sauca wrote that, as a World Heritage museum, “Hagia Sophia has been a place of openness, encounter and inspiration for people from all nations”.</p>
<p>The colossal Hagia Sophia was built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian cathedral and was converted into a mosque after the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 1453.</p>
<p>The secular Turkish government decided in 1934 to make it a museum.</p>
<p>Mr Sauca said the museum status had been “a powerful expression” of Turkey’s commitment to inclusion and secularism.</p>
<p>Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has formally converted the building back into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, hours after a high court annulled the 1934 decision to turn it into a museum.</p>
<p>Mr Erdogan, a devout Muslim, has frequently used the debate over Hagia Sophia to drum up support for his Islamic-rooted party.</p>
<p>The decision has provoked deep dismay among Orthodox Christians.</p>
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