Turkey not ready for European Union membership, says Cardinal Walter Casper

(05 July 2006) : “Turkey is not yet ready to be admitted into the European Union, because religious freedom is not ensured there,” argued Cardinal Walter Kasper, the President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, in an interview with the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera, on Tuesday. The prelate offered his reactions after the knife attack on a French Missionary priest, Fr. Pierre Brunissen, on 1^st July who is serving in Turkey. Cardinal Kasper saw the assault-- the third serious attack on a Catholic priest in recent months-- as further evidence of growing "Islamic fundamentalism" in Turkey. Father Pierre Brunissen was badly wounded when he was stabbed twice by a man who was promptly taken into police custody. The AsiaNews service reports, however, that Father Brunissen had received a number of threats in recent weeks, and the parish church he served in the town of Samsun had been vandalized. The violence and intimidation had increased after the murder of an Italian missionary, Father Andrea Santoro, in the Turkish town of Trabzon, in February this year. Archbishop Padovese, the apostolic nuncio in Turkey said that hostility toward the Church has increased significantly in recent months, with an apparent campaign against Christian influence, and "it is the Catholic priests who are being targeted." Church leaders in Turkey are worried by a rising tide of anti-Christian violence in the months leading up to a visit by Pope Benedict XVI in November.