[Macoraba]

I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!! Awhile back the Holy Father - Pope John Paul (Martyr) the Great - gave the Patriarch of Constantinople a church in Rome. I think it only fit and proper and just that the Hagia Sophia be given to us Catholics as our church in Istanbul.

Btw at the time of the fall of Constantinople (1453) the Greeks were in union with Rome and thus the Hagia Sophia was actually a Catholic church!

[jec1ny]

"I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!! Awhile back the Holy Father - Pope John Paul (Martyr) the Great - gave the Patriarch of Constantinople a church in Rome. I think it only fit and proper and just that the Hagia Sophia be given to us Catholics as our church in Istanbul.

Btw at the time of the fall of Constantinople (1453) the Greeks were in union with Rome and thus the Hagia Sophia was actually a Catholic church!"

I do hope that your comment was tongue in cheek. In any case Hagia Sophia has always been the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch. The question of whether or not Rome and Constantinople were in communion in 1453 is highly debatable, but not relevant to the issue of the cathedral rightly belonging to the EP.

[Cronos]

I think it only fit and proper and just that the Hagia Sophia be given to us Catholics as our church in Istanbul.

No. I am Catholic and I don't want this -- that act would only cause unwanted, unnecessary friction between the CAtholic and Orthodox churches. The EP would consider it His Cathedral just as the church of John Laterno is the mother Church for us Latins. As long as it is a Christian Church, what difference does it make? I want the Orthodox to have it.

[eleni121]

Catholic does not mean Roman Catholic...it means universally united in Christ.

Haghia Sophia cannot be given to anyone by anyone - it belongs to all Christians.

[Romish_Papist]

I think it only fit and proper and just that the Hagia Sophia be given to us Catholics as our church in Istanbul. As you can see by my name, I am a Papist 100 percent. That said, the Hagia Sophia belongs to the Orthodox if anyone. If they did not want it, (and how could they not?) then I could see the Catholic Church taking it, but not before the Orthodox get the opportunity.

[K. Smirnov]

Just FYI - not too long before the fall of Constantinople, the fellow Catholic brethren crusaders stormed and plundered the city, slaughtering their fellow Eastern Christians. That is how Hagia Sophia is actually a Catholic church and that is how Byzantine empire was in union with Rome.

As some commentator on History Channel says "in between 1400 and 1450 the population of Constantinople plummeted from 500000 to 50000". Such a figue laef. Guess, why is that? The absentees must have moved to countryside. No traffic, no pollution.