The Easter holiday was celebrated in Saint Giragos, once one of the largest churches in the Middle East located in Turkey’s Diyarbakir.

The church was fully renovated last year and celebrated the first Easter in 98 years, Gercekgundem website reported.

Armenians gathered in the church had to celebrate the holiday just by lighting candles and saying prayers, but without a priest. Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople refused to send a priest to conduct a liturgy, noting the priest will be in Diyarbakır only in a week.

Saint Giragos Armenian Church of Diyarbakir was built in 1376, in the city’s district where large number of Christians lived until the Armenian Genocide.

The belfry of the Church, which is the largest Christian cathedral in the Middle East, was destroyed by a lightning in 1913. Subsequently, the local Armenians built a new belfry, whose bell was prepared by a mixture of gold and copper.

In 1915, however, the Turks destroyed the belfry with cannons solely because it was higher than the minarets of the surrounding mosques.      

Saint Giragos Church was left to its fate after 1980, but Diyarbakir Armenians who now live in Istanbul established the Saint Giragos Fund to restore the church. The Fund paid 70 percent of the restoration costs, worth $2.5 million dollars, and the Diyarbakir City Hall paid the remaining 30 percent.