CHURCH LEADERS CONDEMN CHRISTIAN MURDERS IN TURKEY

Agence France Presse — English
April 20, 2007 Friday

The Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches on Friday condemned the
murders of three Christian evangelists in Turkey this week, calling
them a "mad act" and "a violation of religious freedoms".

"I think all Turkish people have condemned this mad act, the work of a
fanatical minority," Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope’s right-hand
man and the Vatican’s secretary of state, was cited by the I-Media
agency as saying.

Bertone referred to the victims as "martyrs" but added that "we must
not ruin the results of the pope’s visit to Turkey (in December),
which led to a connection and an effort to understand Christianity
on the part of the majority of the Turkish population".

Meanwhile, a statement from the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Chuch
on Friday condemned the murders as a "violation of religious freedoms".

It expressed hope that Turkish leaders’ remarks following the attacks
"would lead to guarantees for religious freedom in Turkey, a necessary
condition for the country’s democratisation and its entrance into
Europe".

The Greek Orthodox church is opposed to Turkey’s membership of the
European Union.

The synod also expressed its "anguish over the possible religious
and political motives" of the killings, noting that they followed
last year’s murder of a Catholic priest and January’s killing of a
Armenian journalist.

The three people killed in the eastern Turkish town of Malatya were
members of an evangelist Protestant community. According to several
accounts, they were tortured and interrogated about their missionary
activities before they died.

Ten murder suspects were questioned by police on Friday.
From: Baghdasarian