On a rainy evening last week, the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine, a miniature Hagia Sophia that glows from within like a child’s nightlight topped by a golden cross, loomed over the World Trade Center’s memorial fountains. But is this new building—one of the last projects to be completed on the 16 acres of Ground Zero—a comforting sight or a troubling intrusion of religion into a secular venue?
St. Nicholas’s previous home, in a former tavern across the street from the Trade Center’s south tower, was destroyed when that tower collapsed on September 11, 2001. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and operates the Center, offered to buy the lot the church had stood on, which it needed for underground vehicle access to the reconfigured complex, for $20 million and a promise to help build a church in a comparable location.
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