Catholic bishop stabbed to death in Turkey

[maximus]

Thursday, 3 June 2010

A Roman Catholic bishop has been stabbed to death in southern Turkey, state-run media report.

Luigi Padovese, 63, was attacked in the garden of his summer house in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun, according to Anatolia news agency.

Police have arrested Bishop Padovese's driver, a man identified only as Murat A. He was suffering from psychological problems, the provincial governor said.

There has been a series of attacks on Christians in Turkey in recent years.

Bishop Padovese, the Pope's apostolic vicar in Anatolia and an Italian national, died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.

He had been due to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet the Pope and other bishops in a meeting ahead of the church's synod on the Middle East in October.

The Vatican said it was "dismayed" by Bishop Padovese's death.

"It is a terrible... incredible" killing, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told the Italian news agency ANSA.

Provincial Governor Mehmet Celalettin Lekesiz told Associated Press news agency that the suspect had worked for Mr Padovese for four-and-a-half years.

"The initial investigation shows that the incident is not politically motivated," Lekesiz said.

"We have learned that the suspect had psychological problems and was receiving treatment".

There have been several such attacks in recent years, in a country where Christians comprise less than 1% of the mainly Muslim population.


news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10228730.stm

[maximus]

Friday, 23 November 2007

Turkey denies Christians church
By Christopher Landau
BBC religious affairs correspondent

St Paul’s Church in Tarsus
Worship is not allowed in St Paul’s Church in Tarsus

The Turkish government says it is "out of the question" for it to hand over a revered medieval church where Catholics want to hold Christian services.

The church, currently run as a museum, stands in the south-eastern town of Tarsus, where St Paul was born.

The Turkish constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but Christian groups in the country believe that in practice they face discrimination.

Next week the Vatican will hold a Catholic-Muslim forum to improve ties.

It was the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne in Germany who first challenged the Turkish government to hand over the church in Tarsus.

He has pointed out that Muslims of Turkish origin in Germany are free to worship and build new mosques, but that Christians in Turkey face substantial obstacles to their religious freedom.

The Turkish government's response to the BBC leaves no room for doubt about its intention to retain control of the church.

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7701527.stm

[maximus]

23 November 2007

Turks in Christian murder trial
Funeral of murdered Christian in Malatya
Many Christians moved out of Malatya after the murders
The trial has started in eastern Turkey of five men accused of killing three Christians earlier this year.

The Christians, who included a pastor and a German missionary, were stabbed repeatedly and had their throats cut.

The suspects, aged 19 and 20, were detained at the scene of the crime, a Protestant publishing house in Malatya.

The trial was adjourned after defence lawyers argued they needed more time to prepare. The hearing is now expected to resume in mid-January.

Turkey is a candidate for EU membership. The bloc has asked Ankara to protect the human rights of the country's ethnic and religious minorities, as a precondition for membership.

Germany has accused Turkey of "unacceptable intolerance" towards non-Muslims.

The murders prompted three Christian families to leave Malatya, in eastern Turkey.

The attack came months after the killing of the ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and a year after the killing of a Catholic priest in northern Turkey.

In all cases, the alleged killers were nationalist-minded young men or even teenagers.

Turkish nationalists often view missionaries as a threat, especially in remote places like Malatya, says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul.

Life sentences

In Malatya, the defendants reportedly told police they were acting to foil a plot to undermine Islam and divide Turkey.

Turkish police carry one of the victims from the publishing house
The three victims were found bound by hand and foot

The killings were condemned by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The five suspects face three life sentences each, while two others are charged with membership of a terrorist organisation.

A lawyer acting for the victims' families earlier said he was concerned by the tone of the indictment against the accused.

More than half the 31 files in the indictment focus on the missionary work of the men murdered. They include contact details of people they approached.

The lawyer believes that will help those accused plead provocation.

The town's Protestant community now numbers only about two dozen people.

There are only around 100,000 Christians left in Turkey - less than 1% of the population.

[maximus]

2 July 2006


Catholic priest knifed in Turkey
Father Pierre Brunissen
Father Brunissen was admitted to hospital after the knife attack
A French Roman Catholic priest has been stabbed by a knife-carrying attacker in the Turkish Black Sea port of Samsun.

The attack on Father Pierre Brunissen, 74, is the third assault on a Catholic priest in Turkey in recent months.

Fr Brunissen was stabbed in the hip and leg and rushed to hospital, but a church official said his condition was not life-threatening.

Police detained an unnamed 47-year-old man who they described as suffering from mental illness.

Priests 'targeted'

The man had allegedly made complaints about Fr Brunissen trying to convert people to his faith.

Reports said he was attacked in a busy street about 1km from his church.

"I hope this has nothing to with Islamic fundamentalism," Monsignor Luigi Padovese, the apostolic vicar for Anatolia, told the Associated Press news agency .

"The climate has changed... it is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."

Father Andrea Santoro, an Italian, was shot dead in his church in the northern town of Trabzon in February.

A 16-year-old boy has been charged with the 60-year-old priest's death. Witnesses said the youth yelled "God is great" in Arabic before firing two bullets into Santoro's back.

Another priest, a Slovenian, was grabbed by the throat, thrown into a garden and received death threats during an attack in the port of Izmir, AP said.

[maximus]

5 February 2006


Shooting kills priest in Turkey
map
A priest was shot dead in the Black Sea port of Trabzon
An Italian Catholic priest has been shot dead outside his church in north-east Turkey.

Police in the Black Sea port of Trabzon said they were searching for a teenage boy seen fleeing from the scene of the attack on Sunday.

It was unclear if the shooting was connected to widespread Muslim outrage over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Turkish broadcaster NTV identified the priest as Andrea Santore and said he died from a single shot to the chest.

Turkey has seen regular protests in recent days over the Danish caricatures of Muhammad.

Leaders of the overwhelmingly Muslim country have condemned the pictures, but have also called for calm.

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is the spiritual head of the world's Orthodox Christians, and other non-Muslim clerics in Turkey have also criticised the images.

Several Italian newspapers have reprinted the pictures, saying they are defending freedom of expression.

[maximus]

18 April 2007


Three killed at Turkish publisher
Turkish police carry one of the victims from the publishing house
The three victims were found tied up in the office
Three people have been killed at a publishing house in Turkey that produced bibles, in an apparent attack on the country's Christian minority.

The victims were discovered at the Zirve publishing house in the eastern city of Malatya.

They were bound hand and foot and their throats had been slit, officials said.

Nationalists had protested at the publishing house in the past, accusing it of involvement in missionary activities, local media reported.

There is a rising wave of nationalist feeling in Turkey, the BBC's Sarah Rainsford reports, with Christian minorities complaining of pressure and harassment.

In the most serious incident so far, a Catholic priest was killed last year by a teenage nationalist gunman as he prayed in his church.

'Brutal crime'

The general manager of the publishing house, Hamza Ozant, told local media that his employees had been threatened in recent days.

A number of men had been detained in connection with the attack, local officials said.

Television pictures showed police leading several young men from the building.

One of those killed in the attack was German, the country's ambassador said.

"Even if the exact circumstances of the crime are not yet known, I most strongly condemn this brutal crime," Eckart Cuntz said in a statement.

Malatya is known here as a very nationalistic city, often with an extreme religious undertone, our correspondent adds.

It is the hometown of Mehmet Ali Agca, who in 1981 shot Pope John Paul II.

Turkey's Christian community comprises less than 1% of its population. More than 99% of the Turkish population is Muslim.

[ianstone]

Was his killer a member of the religion of peace ?

[maximus]

Most of the murders of the priests, Turkish officials blames on mentally ill persons in an apparent move to hide the real motives which religiously motivated.

[bobdina]

Thanks Maximus, I had no idea this was happening although I must say it does not surprise me. Bob

[joelee]

As a member of NATO ,can't some pressure be applied to Turkey to crack down on these killings of "men of God". I don't think that anyone wants pissed off Christian men taking the law into their own hands.

[Yono]

Religion of PEACE strikes again.
I may be a Jew but may that Bishop Rest In Peace.

[ianstone]

Hi Yono,
some useless information for you.
My mate at school was a son of a Jewish Tailor, and he was explaining about his bar mitzvah after football practice.
When he screamed the loudest scream from a man imaginable. He did not wear under pants/ boxers.
In his haste to get out and get home, he pulled the zip in his jeans half way through his bell end of his penis and it got stuck.
Ambulance, towels and we all grabbed our groin. Over 5 months before he returned to school. No one laughed.
To his credit he stood on the bench and showed the new shape oblong shape. And yes it hurt like a bastard.
Thing is the girls were always chasing him for a feel and a look. I said you lucky devil, he simply said,
no mate the pain was indescribable I wish it had fallen off and just re sew it on.
Zach became a successful bespoke window ans frame maker, with many children
I ofter ramble on, don't worry, but a true story never thee less.

[joelee]

Ian I was going to thank you, but I'm not because it hurt to read that! LOL! Nah I'll thank you anyway. Christ, how about some warning next time. I still have my legs crossed... :)