When members of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church celebrate their patron saint’s feast day on Dec. 6, they may be able to mark the occasion with prayers on newly blessed ground in lower Manhattan.
It depends on work schedules at the construction site for their new sanctuary, which will overlook the National September 11 Memorial. This is a problem Greek Orthodox leaders welcome after a long, complicated legal struggle to rebuild the tiny sanctuary — located 80 yards from the World Trade Center’s South Tower — which was the only church destroyed in the 9/11 maelstrom.
“It’s all of this powerful symbolism, and its link to that September 11 narrative, that lets people grab on to the effort to rebuild this church and see why it matters,” said Steven Christoforou, a youth ministry leader at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.
I have seen what the church is supposed to look like and I am decidedly less than impressed. It’s a sterile monument to modern architecture with all of the aesthetic charm and spiritual inspiration of a Grey Hound bus station.
It’s nice to know they finally can rebuild. Ad Orientem, I looked at the church site, and I have to agree with you about the aesthetics. “Modeled on the Hagia Sophia?” It’s a basilica, but otherwise, as you say, a sterile modern version.