(Tablet) The mayor of Cordoba in Spain has vowed to resist Muslim demands for the city’s sixth-century cathedral to be turned back into a mosque, following the reconversion of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and urged the country’s socialist-led government to ensure it remains Church property.
“Legal reports from our city council and the Andalusia government are clear: ownership of the cathedral belongs to the Church,” Jose Maria Bellido told Spain’s EFE news agency. “As mayor, I intend to defend our city, and if people come from outside telling us what to do, they are going to have the door closed in their faces.”
The 42-year-old politician, a member of Spain’s centre-right opposition Partido Popular, was reacting to calls by the president of Turkey and some Muslim leaders for Islamic worship to be allowed again in the Visigothic cathedral, which was rebuilt as a mosque in 785, when Cordoba became capital of Moorish Spain, but reclaimed after the city’s recapture by King Ferdinand III in 1236.
