A Muslim group was granted permission by a city board on Thursday to remove crosses from a century-old former Catholic church for it to be used as a mosque, the Associated Press reported.
The now-vacant Gothic structure will have six crosses removed from the roof and some spires taken down.
However, an online petition was signed by more than 200 people asking the Syracuse Landmark Preservation Board to deny an application by North Side Learning Center, the church's new owner, to remove the crosses and build a six-foot chain-link fence, according to the AP.
Claiming that religious freedom cannot be interfered with, the vote for church alterations was not allowed to be held by the board, Chairman Don Radke said.
The church transformation had about a dozen people equally divided for each side of the debate, The Post-Standard reported.
"Petition-signers, who included some local residents and former church parishioners, had argued that the former Holy Trinity Catholic Church was a neighborhood landmark built by German immigrants 100 years ago and removing the crosses would deface the architecture," the AP reported.
The AP continued, "The Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse closed the church in 2010 and merged the parish with that of St. John the Baptist because of a declining congregation as population shifted from the city to suburbs. The North Side Learning Center, a nonprofit group that provides literacy programs for immigrants, bought the church and its school and rectory for $150,000 in December."
As the Islamic faith prohibits any kind of worship towards idols and symbols, the crosses needed to be taken down, Yusuf Soule, the center's director and the public point-person for the mosque effort, said.
Over the past 10 years, more than 7,200 refugees, with the majority from Burma, Bhutan and Somalia, have resettled in the Syracuse area, the nonprofit Onondaga Citizens League reported last summer.
