Holy See’s sadness over murder of Catholic bishop in Turkey

(June 4, 2010) The Holy See has expressed deep shock at the murder On Thursday of a Catholic bishop in southern Turkey, underscoring the difficult conditions that the Christian community continued to live in, in the region. “This is a horrible news that left us deeply shocked and of course, extremely sad,” said Holy See’s spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi commenting on the murder Capuchin Bishop Luigi Padovese, the Vicar Apostolic of Anatolia. The 63-yer old bishop was attacked outside his home in the Mediterranean port of Iskenderun - a murder not believed to be politically motivated. The police have arrested the suspected killer, Murat, a mentally unstable person who has been the bishop's driver for the last four and a half years. Fr. Lombardi said that “Bishop Padovese was a very meritorious witness of the Church's life in Turkey; a courageous person dedicated to the Gospel.” The Italian-born bishop was scheduled to leave for Cyprus on Friday to meet Pope Benedict XVI, who is visiting the island to release the working document for the special Synod of bishops for the Middle East scheduled for October in Rome. In a separate statement to The Associated Press, Fr. Lombardi said that Bishop Padovese’s murder showed the “difficult conditions” of the Catholic community in the region. He said the Pope's visit to Cyprus and the upcoming synod of bishops on the Middle East showed “how the universal church is in solidarity with this community.” The killing is the latest in a string of attacks in recent years on Christians in Turkey, where Christians make up less than 1 percent of the 70 million population. In 2006, a 16-year-old boy shot dead a Catholic priest, Father Andrea Santoro, as he prayed in his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. In 2007, in the western city of Izmir, a Italian Catholic priest Fr. Adriano Franchini was stabbed and slightly wounded in the stomach by a 19-year-old man after Sunday Mass. The same year, a group of men entered a Bible-publishing house in the central Anatolian city of Malatya and killed three Christians, including a German national.