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NEW YORK, Dec. 7 (AP) — More than two decades after a small Greek Orthodox church in lower Manhattan was destroyed by the collapsed South Tower of the World Trade Center, its much grander replacement was built this week in an elevated park Open to the public, it overlooks the rebuilt Trade Center Memorial Plaza.
The new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine held its first liturgy on Tuesday to mark St. Nicholas’ Day and is ready to welcome all visitors who wish to remember the faith of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
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“Today is a joyous day for America and New York,” said Michael Psaros, president of the Friends of St. Nicholas, a group tasked with raising funds for the church. “We invite people from all over the United States to come and see the monuments created and erected in honor of the 3,000 people who were martyred and murdered on September 11th.”
The project is one of the last pieces of the new World Trade Center complex, whose completion was once in doubt.
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The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center, fought in court over where to build the new church before agreeing to build it in Liberty Park, south of the main trade center site.
A groundbreaking ceremony took place in 2014, but work stalled after the archdiocese defaulted on payments in 2017.
Work resumed in 2020 with the aim of opening St. Nicholas Church in time for the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2021. Although a ceremony was held to mark the anniversary last year, that goal was not fully achieved.
But on Tuesday, icons depicting the heroes of September 11, as well as Christ and the saints watched the service, which was mainly in New Testament Greek.
“This is the resurrection of St. Nicholas Church,” said Olga Pavlakos, vice president of the parish council and a third-generation member of the St. Nicholas community.
Another believer, Maria Yatrakis, from a family that attended the old St. Nicholas church, said she had tears in her eyes as she entered the new church. “To see it restored like this, and to see it so close to the Statue of Liberty, which represents all the immigrants who helped build this church, is very moving for all of us,” Yatrakis said.
The church where Greek immigrants gathered a century ago was a converted tavern that eventually dwarfed the office buildings that grew around it. The new church was designed by Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava in the style of historic Byzantine architecture, including Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, with a central dome flanked by towers.
The church is clad in marble from the same Pentelic vein in Greece where the Parthenon stone was mined, and at night its dome shines like a beacon through translucent marble panels.
The portraits inside were painted by a monk at the Xenoventos monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, known as Father Lucas. The Rev. Alexander Karlusos, former deputy general of the archdiocese and a key figure involved in rebuilding the church from the beginning, said Father Lucas was asked not only to create traditional icons but also to “show the reality of September 11 “.
In one panel depicting the day of the attack, ships were sailing to rescue people fleeing the devastation as the Twin Towers burned. In another painting, Christ greets first responders, including police and firefighters, at his resurrection.
“It’s the first icon that you see in the Orthodox tradition that includes a contemporary resurrection scene,” Karloutsos said. “We’ve never done this before in any Orthodox church in the world.”
The list price for St Nicholas is about $95 million after years of cost overruns, Karloutsos said. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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