American pastor Joel Tenney sings Der Vorghormia in Hagia Sophia

Christian preacher and member of the Evangelical Church Joel Tenney sang Der Vorghormia in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

“I worshipped Jesus Our God in the Jewel of Christendom, (the now Islamic Occupied Cathedral) one of the oldest in the world, I sung Der Vorghormia, Hayr Mer, and Christos Anesti before being removed from the Cathedral for disrupting the evening Islamic prayers in the now mosque by the officials. I will not rest from advocacy until Greece reclaims the Hagia Sophia, Armenia regains her stolen lands, and the Turks receive Justice for what they’ve done to Christendom,” he said on Facebook.

The Church of Hagia Sophia was founded by the Byzantine Christian emperor Justinian I and opened on December 27, 537. It remained the world’s largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years. After the capture of Constantinople by the Ottomans and the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, the cathedral was converted into a mosque. By order of the founder of the modern Turkish state, Kemal Ataturk, it was reopened in 1934 as a museum and was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
In July 2020, the Turkish State Council annulled the 1934 decision to transform the Hagia Sophia into a museum. Immediately afterward, President Tayyip Erdogan announced that he had signed a decree to turn the cathedral into a mosque and start Muslim services there.