SLAIN ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST REMEMBERED ON ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH IN TURKEY

AP Worldstream
Feb 05, 2007

The head of Italy’s bishops on Monday led a memorial Mass for a
Catholic priest slain in Turkey at the time of widespread anger in
the Islamic world over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad.

The Rev. Andrea Santoro was shot dead Feb. 5, 2006, as he knelt
in prayer in his church in the Black Sea port city of Trabzon. A
16-year-old youth is serving an 18-year prison sentence for the
murder that was believed linked to the outrage over publication of
the caricatures in European newspapers.

"I hope this service will help deepen friendship," Cardinal Camillo
Ruini, accompanied by Santoro’s mother and two sisters, told reporters
upon arrival in Trabzon. "I hope it will help us to find the truth
and bring us closer to God."

The city, on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast has come under intense
scrutiny after the killing last month of ethnic Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, who spoke out about the mass killings of Armenians in
the early 20th century and drew the ire of nationalists.

Prosecutors have charged eight people in connection with the killing,
including a teenage gunman and an alleged instigator _ who, like
Santoro’s killer, were from Trabzon.

Pope Benedict XVI remembered Santoro, who worked for dialogue
between the Christian and Muslim faiths, during his visit to Turkey
in November.

Santoro’s killing was one of many recent attacks against Christians
in this predominantly Muslim country. Two other Catholic priests were
attacked last year in Turkey, where Christians have often complained
of discrimination and persecution.

A group of young men attacked and threatened a Catholic priest in
the Aegean port city of Izmir. The priest, a Slovenian, told Italian
state TV at the time that the men grabbed him by the throat, threw
him into a garden and threatened to kill him.

A French priest, Pierre Brunissen, 74, was injured in the hip and leg
when a man stabbed him. That attack took place in the Black Sea port
of Samsun.

Of Turkey’s 70 million people, some 65,000 are Armenian Orthodox
Christians, 20,000 are Roman Catholic, and 3,500 are Protestant,
mostly converts from Islam. Around 2,000 are Greek Orthodox and 23,000
are Jewish.