President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday inaugurated the first church built with government backing in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey’s 100-year history as a post-Ottoman state.

The Mor Ephrem Syriac Orthodox Church’s opening marks an important cultural and political moment for both Turkey and its powerful leader.

Erdogan drew widespread condemnation during his two-decade rule for converting ancient churches into mosques and making Islamic conservatism into a leading social force.

He has always countered that he was simply restoring the rights of pious Muslims in the staunchly secular republic founded by field marshal Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923.

Erdogan laid the first stone for the church’s construction for Istanbul’s 17,000-strong Assyrian Christians in 2019.

“We are seeing big problems today across many parts of the world,” Erdogan told the faithful as all-out war raged between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

“But the solidarity shown here today — I find it very important,” Erdogan said.

“We always protect the oppressed against the oppressor. That is our duty.”

Assyrian Christianity traces its history to communities that lived in the first century AD in a region stretching from southeastern Turkey to Syria and Iraq.

Its main church moved from the Turkish city of Mardin to Damascus in 1932.

‘Love letter’

Some small Turkish churches have been quietly restored and re-opened in the past 100 years.

Erdogan said on Sunday that 20 existing churches had been repaired since his Islamic-rooted party came to power in 2002.

But the Mor Ephrem “is the first newly built church to open its doors since the founding of the Turkish Republic,” Assyrian community leader Sait Susin told AFP by telephone.

“We are very happy.”

Erdogan drew international indignation for converting Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia —once the world’s largest cathedral —from a museum into a mosque in 2020.

The United Nations cultural body UNESCO expressed “grave concern” at the time.

Erdogan brushed the criticism aside and did exactly the same thing to Istanbul’s Byzantine-era Chora Church later that same year.

Greece called that conversion “yet another provocation against religious persons everywhere”.

Erdogan came under particularly strong attacks at home for unveiling a new mosque in 2021 on Taksim Square — an Istanbul gathering point built around a monument celebrating Ataturk’s foundation of the secular Turkish state.

The new Istanbul church can accommodate 750 worshippers.

Erdogan wavers in his speeches between robustly defending pious Muslims and embracing Turkey’s numerous communities.

He told supporters on the eve of the first round of May’s presidential election that he had written a “love letter” to Turkey.

“We have penned a love letter for every individual of our nation, without any distinction of origin or religion,” he told the crowd.

He ended that day by leading Muslim prayers at the Hagia Sophia mosque.

Erdogan edged out his secular rival in a runoff election two weeks later.
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The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has brought colorful displays to the New Mexico sky in an international event that attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators every year.

The event started Saturday with a drone light show before sunrise followed by a mass ascension of hot air balloons. Over nine days, local residents and visitors will be treated to a cavalcade of colorful and special-shaped balloons.

The annual gathering has become a major economic driver for the state’s biggest city. The Rio Grande and nearby mountains provide spectacular backdrops to the fiesta that began with a few pilots launching 13 balloons from an open lot near a shopping center on what was the edge of Albuquerque in 1972.

The fiesta has morphed into one of the most photographed events in the world, now based at Balloon Fiesta Park. Balloon designs have featured cartoon animals, Star Wars characters and even the polar bear found on Klondike bars.

“But they’re still all about the basics,” said fiesta director Sam Parks, who flies a globe-style balloon modeled after one flown by the fiesta’s late founder Sid Cutter. “You add heat to a big bag of air and you go up.”

Nearly 830,000 people from around the world attended last year’s event. Scheduled nighttime events include fireworks and balloon glows, in which hot air balloons are inflated and lit up from the ground.

The launch window opens Saturday evening for what is billed as one of the biggest events in aviation: the Gordon Bennett competition. The winner of the gas balloon race is the one who flies the farthest distance.

Some 550 balloon pilots are registered to fly this year, seeking to take advantage of a phenomenon known as the “Albuquerque box,” when the wind blows in opposite directions at different elevations, allowing skillful pilots to bring a balloon back to a spot near the point of takeoff.

Visitors to the event also can pay to go aloft for views of the Sandia Mountains to the west and New Mexico’s capital, Santa Fe, farther north.

“It has become part of the culture,” Parks said. “The thread, if you will, of those here.”

Elizabeth Wright-Smith, who is flying the Smokey Bear balloon this week, said she reunites with friends from all over the country at the fiesta that she would not see otherwise. As of early Saturday afternoon, she had already run into 30 people she had met from various balloon races, safety seminars and other events across the country.

“It’s a big reunion,” she said.

Her favorite part of the fiesta is watching and interacting with the thousands of spectators who flock to Balloon Fiesta Park, which grow smaller as she ascends in her balloon. The sky was clear Saturday – a contrast from last year, when off-and-on rain left parts of the fiesta soggy.

“Pictures don’t do it justice, videos don’t do it justice,” Wright-Smith said. “You’ve got to be standing there watching them to really get it.”
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If stones could talk, sing and tell stories, Yogi Trivedi believes the marble and limestone that adorn the spires, pillars and archways of the stunning Hindu temple in central New Jersey would compose a paean to the divine.

The tales these stones tell are those of seva (selfless service) and bhakti (devotion), which form the core of the Swaminarayan sect, a branch of Hinduism, said Trivedi, a scholar of Hinduism at Columbia University.

It took a combined total of about 4.7 million hours of work by artisans and volunteers to hand-carve about 600,000 cubic meters of stone. The four varieties of marble from Italy and limestone from Bulgaria traveled first to India and then nearly 13,000 kilometers across the world to New Jersey.

They were then fitted together like a giant jigsaw to create what is now touted as the largest Hindu temple outside India to be built in the modern era, standing on a 126-acre tract. It will open to the public Monday.

The largest temple complex in the world is the Ankgor Wat, originally constructed in the 12th century in Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia, and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu by King Suryavarman II. It is now described as a Hindu-Buddhist temple and is one of 1,199 UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The Robbinsville temple is one of many built by the Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha or BAPS, a worldwide religious and civic organization within the Swaminarayan sect.

“Service and devotion are the two basic elements that form the subtle foundation of how a temple so majestic gets built here in central New Jersey,” said Trivedi, who studies the Swaminarayan faith tradition and follows it.

This temple will be the third Akshardham or “abode of the divine” the organization has built after two others in New Delhi and Gujarat, where BAPS is headquartered. The former is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world. The sect, which will celebrate its 50th year in North America next year, oversees more than 1,200 temples and 3,850 centers around the world.

The New Jersey Akshardham, which has been in the works for about 12 years, came under scrutiny and criticism after a 2021 civil lawsuit alleging forced labor, meager wages and grim working conditions.

Twelve of the 19 plaintiffs have now retracted their allegations and the lawsuit is on hold pending an investigation “with which BAPS continues to cooperate fully,” Trivedi said. 

The complaint alleges that those exploited were Dalits or members of the former untouchable caste in India. Caste is an ancient system of social hierarchy based on one’s birth that is tied to concepts of purity and social status.

The case continues to raise questions among activists fighting caste discrimination and those advocating for workers’ rights, about the blurred lines between uncompensated work and the concept of selfless service, which followers of the faith say constitutes their core belief.

Trivedi said these allegations weighed heavily on community members because their faith has always taught them “to see the divine in all and love and serve them as manifestations of the divine.” He said Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the sect’s fifth spiritual successor, who envisioned such a temple campus in the United States, was a progressive guru who cared deeply about social equality.

“Caste and class do not divide us,” Trivedi said.

The temple project brought forth volunteerism and service, which like the sculptor’s chisel, chip away people’s egos and prime them to learn, he said.

“In that learning, one becomes a better person within and that is the end goal of seva,” Trivedi said. “It’s not just to give to the community or build these (ornate structures), but to better oneself.”

He said the temple would not have been possible without the service of thousands of volunteers many of whom took time off school and work to serve in different capacities. This might be the first Hindu temple where women were involved in the actual temple construction under the artisans’ supervision, he added.

This week, families from across the country have been streaming into the temple campus to get a sneak peek. Devotees bowed to each other and to monks in saffron robes. As the sun set, two men in white robes performed a ceremony in front of the 49-foot-tall statue of the Bhagwan Nilkanth Varni, who later became known as Bhagwan Swaminarayan, the founder of the sect who ushered in a moral and spiritual renaissance in western India.

Avani Patel was visiting from Atlanta with her husband and their two children, ages 11 and 15. She knelt inside the temple and marveled at the ornate ceiling, her hands folded in prayer.

“It’s jaw dropping, mind blowing,” she said.

Patel said she and her husband, Pritesh, were among the volunteers who gave their time to create the complex, and she is proud to be a part of an organization that would build such a resource to pass on these values to posterity.

Trivedi said he does not view the temple “just as a Hindu place of worship.”

“It’s not even just Indian or Indian American,” he said, adding that the temple stands for universal values that can be found in every religious text and in the hearts and minds of great thinkers and leaders of every era.

“What we’ve tried to do is express these universal values in a way that relate to all visitors.” 
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Human rights campaigners across the world welcomed the awarding of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi, an Iranian women’s rights campaigner who is jailed in Tehran. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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When the megaphone called out for the daily Islamic prayers, the nonbeliever grabbed his prayer beads and ambled through the streets to join others at the mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria’s largest city. Formerly a Muslim, he now identifies as an atheist but remains closeted, performing religious obligations only as a cover.

“To survive as an atheist, you cannot act like one,” said the man, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity over fears for his safety. He said he narrowly escaped being killed by a mob in 2015 after some people found out he had forsaken Islam.

“If I ever come out in northern Nigeria to say I am an atheist, it will be an automatic death sentence,” said the man, a business owner in his 30s.

In parts of the world, the religiously unaffiliated are on the rise, and can safely and publicly be a “none” — someone who identifies as an atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. In countries like Nigeria, the situation is starkly different.

Nonbelievers in Nigeria said they perennially have been treated as second-class citizens in the deeply religious country whose 210 million population is almost evenly divided between Christians dominant in the south and Muslims who are the majority in the north. While the south is relatively safe for nonbelievers, some say threats and attacks have worsened in the north since the leader of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, Mubarak Bala, was arrested and later jailed for blasphemy.

The Associated Press spoke to seven nonbelievers to document their experiences. Most spoke anonymously and in secret locations over concerns for their safety.

“Bala’s imprisonment rolled our movement underground,” Leo Igwe, a founder of the humanist association, said of the group’s leader, who in 2022 was jailed for 24 years. A court convicted him on an 18-count charge of blaspheming Islam and breach of public peace through his posts on Facebook.

Since Bala was prosecuted by the Kano state government, the humanist association — which has several hundred members — has gone underground, struggling with unprecedented threats to members who no longer hold meetings, Leo said.

Nigeria’s constitution provides for freedom of religion and expression, but activists say threats to religious freedom are common, especially in the north.

Almost half of the countries in Africa, including Nigeria, have statutes outlawing blasphemy. In most secular courts in Nigeria, the stiffest penalty for a blasphemy charge is two years in prison, while it carries a death penalty in the country’s Islamic courts, active in the majority Muslim north.

There are no records of any such executions in recent years. The most recent instance of a death sentence, issued in December against an Islamic cleric, Abduljabbar Nasiru Kabara, has not been carried out.

The Shariah law that operates in Islamic courts defines blasphemous acts as those committed by anyone who “intentionally abuses, insults, derogates, humiliates or seeks to incite contempt of the holy Prophet Muhammad.”

But what exactly constitutes actions that insult Islam is often open to interpretation by accusers, Igwe said. As a result, some alleged offenders have been attacked and killed before any trial.

At least three people have been killed for alleged blasphemy in northern Nigeria in the past year. The latest victim, killed in June, was a Muslim stoned to death after being accused of making comments that blasphemed Islam.

Authorities in Nigeria have failed to act to prevent such attacks, and prosecutions have been rare, said Isa Sanusi, director of Amnesty International in Nigeria.

“The alarming uptick in blasphemy killings and accusations underscores the urgency with which the authorities must wake up to Nigeria’s international legal obligations to respect and protect human rights,” Sanusi said.

Threats against the nonreligious in Nigeria are common on social media. On Facebook, a group named Anti-Atheist, users frequently posted messages that trolled or threatened atheists.

The atheist in Kano, in a dimly lit room, spoke with a mix of grit and fear about his experiences as a nonbeliever in a nation where about 98% of the population are Christians or Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center. A Facebook post from Bala in 2015, critiquing some Islamic teachings, influenced the man’s shift to atheism.

Once a Muslim, Bala was seen as an influential member of the humanist community; most of the nonbelievers who spoke to the AP credited him as a source of inspiration.

Life as a nonbeliever in Nigeria is also difficult for women, who already are severely underrepresented in government and other key sectors.

“Your achievements are reduced to nothing if you are irreligious,” said Abosuahi Nimatu, who dropped out of university in Katsina state in 2020 to escape being killed after her peers learned she was no longer a Muslim.

Nimatu was so close to Bala that his prolonged detention depressed her for a year, she said. She used her Facebook account to campaign for his release, prompting threats that reached her cellphone and email inbox. Her home address was shared among people threatening to attack her and her family.

Even at home, she is often reminded that no man would marry her.

“You are seen as a rebel and as a wayward person,” she said.

In 2020, Nigeria became the first secular democracy designated by the U.S. State Department as a “Country of Particular Concern” for engaging in or tolerating “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” It later was dropped from that list of countries, prompting criticism from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which says Nigeria should be re-added. It is a different reality for the openly faithless in southern Nigeria; they even hold public meetings occasionally. The two atheists who spoke to AP in the commercial hub of Lagos said they had never been attacked or threatened.

Busayo Cole, a former Christian, said his family is indifferent about his religious status. Beyond his family, the worst consequences he faces are occasional snide remarks.

“People are more liberal about things like that down here,” said Cole.

At the Kuje prison in Abuja, Bala continues to serve his jail term, receiving visitors from time to time including his wife Amina Ahmed, also a humanist. She went to see him most recently with their 3-year-old son.

He is in good spirits, Ahmed said of her husband. But it has been difficult for her.

“I am trying to be strong (but) my strength sometimes fails me,” she said.
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Two children scribbled petitions to St. Gabriele dell’Addolorata in the sanctuary where the young saint is venerated in this central Italian mountain village. Andrea, 6, asked for blessings for his family and pets, while Sofia, 9, offered thanksgiving for winning a dance competition.

Their parents bring them here often, and consider themselves better Catholics than many — but they rarely if ever go to Mass and don’t receive Communion because they are not married, thus shunning two sacraments the Catholic Church considers foundational.

“I practice where I want,” said the mother, Carmela Forino. “One has to believe in something, right? You do what you feel in your heart. You can’t require me to go to Mass on Sundays.”

That’s the paradox in this country long considered the cradle of the Catholic faith. Elsewhere in deeply secular Western Europe, the “nones” — those rejecting organized religion — are growing fast.

In Italy, however, most retain a nominal affiliation, steeped in tradition but with little adherence to doctrine or practice. According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Italians profess themselves to be Catholic — but only 19% attend services at least once a week while 31% never do, per data by the Italian statistics agency, ISTAT.

The COVID-19 pandemic pruned even more tepid Catholics, accelerating a loss in faith that started at least a generation ago, said Franco Garelli, a University of Turin sociology professor.

“‘I don’t have time, I don’t feel like it’ — there isn’t a real reason. That’s what’s scary,” said the Rev. Giovanni Mandozzi, parish priest in the sanctuary’s village, Isola. “I tell them, ‘I do Mass in under 40 minutes, you can leave your pasta sauce on the stove, and it won’t even stick to the bottom of the pot.'”

On an early summer Saturday evening, he celebrated Mass with fewer than two dozen elderly parishioners in a former butcher shop, because Isola’s church was damaged by earthquakes that have devastated the region of Abruzzo since 2009.

Nearby, several close friends in their 20s were enjoying drinks and appetizers outside a bar.

They described growing up attending Mass and catechism, only to stop after receiving the sacrament of confirmation — or “getting rid of it,” as one put it — in their early teens.

“It would have become just a routine,” said Agostino Tatulli, 24, a college and music conservatory student who sometimes still goes to church with his mother. “I’d say I’m spiritual. I don’t know if God exists.”

From his childhood serving as an altar boy, he misses “the sense of community that formed on Sunday mornings.” Tatulli still finds some of that in his gigs with a marching band for the popular feasts of patron saints — whose celebrations are crucial to fellow band member Federico Ferri.

“I’m a Catholic believer in the saints, not in the church,” Ferri added. He goes only occasionally to Mass, but often to the sanctuary.

Thousands of teens continue to flock each spring to San Gabriele sanctuary for the “blessing of the pens” with which high school seniors will take final exams — a tradition that felt lovely but “more superstitious than religious” to former pilgrim Michela Vignola.

“Now I don’t even think about it,” she said, referring to the faith she abandoned in her teens. “It’s taken for granted that you’re a believer, but you don’t participate.”

A hairdresser, Vignola coifs a lot of bridal parties, most still headed to church — the choice of about 60% of Italians getting married for the first time, making the sacrament just a bit less popular than a church funeral, favored by 70% of Italians, according to Garelli’s research.

In a nearby village, fifth-generation funeral home director Antonio Ruggieri has added wake rooms for followers of non-Christian religions and is building a “neutral” one with no religious symbols. But almost all his funerals are in a church.

“It’s a sort of redemption, even if you barely believe in it,” he said.

For many priests, that attitude means that a social point of no return might have been reached. How to respond is a major challenge for clergy already struggling with a significant drop in vocations that leaves many with barely the time to celebrate Masses in multiple villages under their care.

Those who participate actively do so now out of a deliberate choice and not because the church, and its social and cultural programs for youth, are the only game in town as they used to be.

Such believers should be focused on as if they were the last of the species on Noah’s Ark, joked the Rev. Bernardino Giordano, the vicar general of the pontifical delegation to Loreto, an even more popular sanctuary less than 160 kilometers away.

In a previous assignment in northern Italy, he dealt with the other extreme — the few who asked his diocese to be “sbattezzati,” or de-baptized, which really meant expunged from the parish baptism record since a sacrament like baptism can’t be undone.

But the majority remain in a grey area — drawn not by sacraments but by the church’s social justice work.

“It’s very reductionist to have as the only measure those who practice (the faith). The Holy Spirit is at work everywhere, it doesn’t belong only to Catholics,” said Archbishop Erio Castellucci, the vice president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

That might appeal to Federica Nobile, 33, who defines herself as “Catholic but not too much.” Raised in a very observant family, she felt she needed to exorcise “the absurd fear of hell” she grew up with.

“I tried to get above the concept of good vs. evil. Looking for nuances allows me to live a lot better,” said the branding strategist and fiction author.

In the provincial capital of Teramo, when Marco Palareti asked the middle-school students in his optional religion class to rank values, family and freedom came first — and faith dead last.

“Kids’ attitude has changed, because in earlier times almost all of them had a life in the parish, while today many don’t go or go only for the sacraments” of First Communion and confirmation, added Palareti, who has taught religion for 36 years.

It’s an attitude that Pietro di Bartolomeo remembers well. When he was a teen bullied because of his family’s strong faith, he “saw God as a loser.” Now a 45-year-old father of five, he runs a Bible group for teens in Teramo.

He believes the Church needs to evangelize more — or it’s doomed to irrelevance.

“The old ladies sooner or later will go to the Creator, and that’s where the cycle stops,” he said.
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The U.S. State Department is marking the 60th anniversary of its Office of Art in Embassies, a government partnership with art communities to promote democratic values. VOA’s Saqib Ul Islam shows us two of its traveling exhibitions that were on display in Washington.
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