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Greece celebrated the Dormition of the Virgin Mary on Tuesday (August 15) with great splendour and devotion, liturgies and processions of the icon of the Virgin.
Panagia Soumela was built in its form at 1860, with the addition of four-story guest rooms spanning the facade of the cave in the mountain
'A most sacred shrine of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and of the Greeks of Pontus, but also a monument of world religious and cultural heritage, was offered for purposes that do not befit its religious character and history,' Vartholomeos wrote.
His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew sent a letter of protest to His Excellency Mr. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Turkish Republic, regarding the sacrilege of the Patriarchal and Stavropegial Monastery of Panaghia Soumela of Trabzon... His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew sent a letter of protest to His Excellency Mr. Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Turkish Republic, regarding the sacrilege...
In 1998, the Greek Parliament recognised the genocide of the Pontic Greek population carried out by the Turks and made 19 May a day of commemoration. The Panaghia Soumela icon was taken to Greece when Pontian Greeks fled.