Architect aims to rebuild a church and help restore a quake-hit Turkish city's multicultural past

ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Architect Buse Ceren Gul is on a mission: restore a 166-year-old Greek Orthodox church that was long a beacon of her hometown's multicultural past. She believes restoring the church left mostly in ruins by the earthquakes in southern Turkey three years ago will help locals reconnect to their city.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake on Feb. 6, 2023, and another hours later were among Turkey’s worst disasters. In Antakya, the quakes destroyed much of the historical town center.

After years of planning, campaigning and fundraising, Gul's team recently uncovered St. Paul’s Church from the rubble that reached up to 5 meters (16 feet).

“The old city is central to the earliest memories of anyone who grew up here,” the 34-year-old Gul told The Associated Press, strolling around the church.

“‘Have we vanished?’ I asked myself when I first saw the site in the aftermath of the quakes," she said.

The quakes destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in Turkey, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in neighboring Syria.

An estimated 10,000 Christians lived in Hatay province before the earthquake, a tiny part of the overall population but one of the largest Christian concentrations in Turkey outside Istanbul.

Antakya was one of the hardest-hit cities, with the destruction threatening to erase one of its oldest streets, Saray Avenue, a hub for Christians, Muslims and Jews of different sects. The street is home to the Greek Orthodox St. Paul’s Church, which belongs to an Arabic-speaking community.

The neighborhood, like others in Antakya, has become “unrecognizable to its residents,” said Gul, who belongs to the Alevi Muslim community. “But raising the old city on its feet might prove that Antakya’s roots can be preserved once again.”

Gul was studying and working on the St. Paul’s Church’s renovation since before the earthquakes. Of the 293 cultural heritage sites damaged in the province, the church is among the few that already had approved architectural drawings, which Gul was drafting.

“When I was working on those plans, one of my mentors told me to draw in a way that the church can get rebuilt if it gets demolished,” Gul said. “I never thought this grand structure could actually be obliterated, but I drafted a point-by-point plan.”

Known as Antioch in the Middle Ages, Antakya is a biblical city dating to the sixth century B.C.E. Over centuries, its Hellenistic, Roman and Ottoman layers — and its diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic communities — survived at least five earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or higher since 115 C.E., disasters that killed hundreds of thousands of people and leveled much of the city.

St. Paul’s Church, a part of Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, on the eastern bank of the Orontes River, was completely rebuilt in 1900 after being destroyed by an earthquake in 1872.

After saving the rebuilding plans from the ruins of her office right after the quakes, Gul secured the support of the World Monuments Fund, a nonprofit that works to preserve endangered cultural heritage.

With the fund’s technical and financial contributions, Gul’s team cleared tons of rubble and set aside the stones they recovered intact. The team continues project planning and technical assessments for the reconstruction stage, but the work on site has stalled until more funding arrives.

“We used to be a financially self-sufficient foundation that was able to help families in need,” Fadi Hurigil, president of the Greek Orthodox Church Foundation of Antakya, which oversees the reconstruction project, told AP. “We lost up to 95% of our income after the earthquakes.”

The rents from church-owned shops on Saray Avenue that catered to tourists provided the church with its main income. Their reopening will be key to help the congregation start generating income as post-earthquake monetary aid from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Damascus and other donors has dwindled, Hurigil said.

Since the beginning of the year, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change has contracted a company for the redevelopment of the shops.

The main challenge for the Antioch Orthodox Christians is the return of people who once filled the St. Paul’s Church’s courtyard and the Saray Avenue district. With most houses in the historical city center still in ruins, the majority of the city’s Greek Orthodox community are displaced from their ancestral homes.

Hurigil said 370 to 400 families lived in central Antakya before the quakes, of whom only about 90 have returned, though others visit the city for commemorative ceremonies.

“The community’s biggest need to be able to return to Antakya is the reconstruction of their homes and commercial properties,” he said.

Many in the Christian Orthodox Community with damaged or destroyed properties live outside of Antakya in smaller districts of Hatay province or in surrounding cities, in the absence of a wider urban planning for restoration of Antakya's historical center.

Evlin Hüseyinoğlu is one of them. She had a family home only a few minutes walk from Saray Avenue that was rebuilt just before the earthquakes.

It had only minor damages in the quake, but the family found it financially risky to restore and settle back in the house in the absence of a decisive urban plan. They are living in Arsuz, a three-hour drive from Antakya, in what used to be their summer house.

Residents and community leaders who lived in the city for generations fear that the extended displacement of different religious and ethnic groups from the city will upend the long-established intercultural harmony that characterized Antakya.

“We grew up in Saray Avenue, now there is no Saray Avenue,” says Dimitri Dogum, 59, a St. Paul’s Church official whose family lived in Antakya for the past 400 years. “So many people have left the city already and it could take another five years until Antakya recovers.”

Dogum, who is Christian, fears that his son and the children of his Sunni Muslim friends will not form the sort of friendships and interfaith dialogue he enjoyed when he spent long days of his boyhood playing on the street together.

“People are gone now,” said Dogum. “My fear is that we will lose the culture of living together.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

A construction vehicle passes the ruins of St. Paul Orthodox Church during debris removal efforts following the February 2023 earthquakes in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

Workers clear rubble and salvage stones from the ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, damaged in the 2023 earthquake, in the city of Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

Sacks of rubble removed from the ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, heavily damaged in the February 2023 earthquake, are placed at the site in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

The ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, heavily damaged in the February 2023 earthquake, are seen in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

The ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, heavily damaged in the February 2023 earthquake, are seen in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

A man walks past the ruins of St. Paul Orthodox Church during debris removal efforts following the February 2023 earthquakes in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

Buse Ceren Gul, a 34 year-old Antakyan architect, speaks to the Associated press in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

The ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, heavily damaged in the February 2023 earthquake, are seen in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

A construction worker stands next to the ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, damaged in the 2023 earthquake, in the city of Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

Workers clear rubble and salvage stones from the ruins of St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church, damaged in the 2023 earthquake, in the city of Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Murat Kocabas)

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV lifted a wooden cross and held it aloft from his waist at the start of the 14 stations of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on his first Good Friday as pontiff, marking the first time in decades that a pope has set out to carry the cross to every station.

“I think it will be an important sign because of what the pope represents, a spiritual leader in the world today, and for this voice, that everyone wants to hear, that says Christ still suffers,” Leo told reporters this week outside of the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. “I carry all of this suffering in my prayer.”

Inside the Colosseum, Leo began the procession flanked by two young people holding torches, and followed by clergy.

At the first station, marking the moment Jesus was condemned to death, the meditation prepared especially for Leo's first Good Friday underlined that those with authority will have to answer to God for how they exercise their power.

"The power to judge; the power to start or end a war; the power to instill violence or peace; the power to fuel the desire for revenge, or for reconciliation,'' read the meditation written by Rev. Francesco Patton, who was custodian of the Holy Land 2016-25, charged, among other things, with looking after sacred sites.

Thousands gathered outside the pagan monument, where the procession continued, following the stations as they were recited over loud speakers.

They included Sister Pelenatita Kieoma Finau from Samoa and a member of the Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary.

"We have been part of our parish stations of the cross, but this is so exciting. It is very meaningful to have the experience of being with the people of Rome on this special occasion,'' she said.

John Paul II carried the cross for the entire procession from his first Good Friday as pontiff in 1979 until his hip surgery in 1995, when he carried it just part of the way, according to AP reports at the time.

For the first two years of his papacy, Benedict XVI carried the cross for the first station inside the Colosseum, then followed other bearers in the procession that ends on a platform on the Palatine Hill.

Pope Francis never carried the cross, but participated in the procession until his health worsened. He died after a long illness last year on Easter Monday, which fell on April 21.

Pope John Paul II was just 58 when he became pope, and was known as a hiker and outdoorsman. His two successors were in their late 70s when they began their papacies, and Francis was missing part of a lung due to a pulmonary infection as a young man.

The Way of the Cross commemorates the final hours of Jesus’ life, from his death sentence to taking up the cross to his crucifixion, death and burial. The procession ends outside the Colosseum atop the Palatine Hill.

“The Way of the Cross is not intended for those who lead a pristinely pious or abstractly recollected life,” Patton wrote in his introduction. “Instead, it is the exercise of one who knows that faith, hope and charity must be incarnated in the real world.”

At 70, Leo is physically fit and an avid tennis player and swimmer. Before becoming pope, Leo would work out regularly at a gym near the Vatican, with a plan befitting a man in his early 50s, according to his former trainer.

On Holy Saturday, the pontiff will preside over a late night Easter vigil, during which he will baptize new Catholics, and lead Roman Catholics into Christianity’s most joyous celebration marking Christ’s resurrection.

On Easter Sunday, the pope will celebrate an open-air Mass in St. Peter’s Square before delivering his Easter message and offer the traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to the city of Rome and the world.

——

Barry reported from Milan.

Pope Leo XIV carries a lightweight, 1.5-meter (5-foot) wooden cross during the Via Crucis, the torchlit Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome, Friday, April 3, 2026, which symbolically retraces Jesus Christ's steps to his crucifixion on Calvary in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Faithful attend the Via Crucis, the torchlit Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession led by Pope Leo XIV at the Colosseum in Rome, Friday, April 3, 2026, which symbolically retraces Jesus Christ's steps to his crucifixion on Calvary in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Leo XIV carries a lightweight, 1.5-meter (5-foot) wooden cross during the Via Crucis, the torchlit Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome, Friday, April 3, 2026, which symbolically retraces Jesus Christ's steps to his crucifixion on Calvary in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV carries a lightweight, 1.5-meter (5-foot) wooden cross during the Via Crucis, the torchlit Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome, Friday, April 3, 2026, which symbolically retraces Jesus Christ's steps to his crucifixion on Calvary in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV carries a lightweight, 1.5-meter (5-foot) wooden cross during the Via Crucis, the torchlit Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession at the Colosseum in Rome, Friday, April 3, 2026, which symbolically retraces Jesus Christ's steps to his crucifixion on Calvary in Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV attends the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Catholic Good Friday, Friday, April 3, 2026 (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Leo XIV attends the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Catholic Good Friday, Friday, April 3, 2026 (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)