by turkkan » Sat Jun 05, 2010 11:24 pm
Pope: Turkey, its people can’t be held responsible for bishop’s murder
Pope greets faithful as he enters the Church of Agia Kyriaki Chrysopolitissa.
Pope Benedict XVI said on Friday that the brutal killing of a leading Catholic bishop in Turkey should not be allowed to hinder dialogue about Islam or stain the image of Turkey and its people.
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“Turkey and the Turkish people cannot be held responsible,” he told reporters on a plane taking him to Cyprus for a three-day visit, marking the first by a pontiff to the ethnically divided island nation.
“We are still awaiting a full explanation, but we don't want to mix up this tragic episode with Islam. It is a case apart which saddens us but should not be allowed to darken the dialogue [with Islam] in any way,” the pope said. “Muslims are our brothers despite our differences,” he added. Papal Apostolic Vicar in Anatolia Bishop Luigi Padovese, an Italian and a leading proponent of Christian dialogue with Islam, was stabbed to death by his Turkish driver on Thursday. It was the pope's first comment on the killing of Padovese, who was to have participated in the pope's trip to Cyprus.
The pontiff also said he did not believe the killing of Padovese was politically or religiously motivated.Cyprus, an island divided between ethnic Turks and Greeks, is viewed by the Vatican as a bridge between Europe and the Mideast. The pope's visit is expected to be a key test of whether the pope has found his diplomatic feet after his linking of Islam to violence during a speech in Germany led to outrage in the Muslim world -- and nearly forced the cancellation of a trip to Turkey in 2006.
Touching upon the lethal Israeli raid on a Gaza aid flotilla east of the island, which killed nine civilians, the pope said that hope for Middle East peace should not be lost. “In all of these episodes we have been living through, there has always been the danger that people lose patience and say, ‘I no longer want to seek peace,’” the pope told reporters en route to Cyprus. “In the face of each instance of violence, you must not lose patience or courage,” he said. “You always have to begin again afresh in the certainty that you can go forward and achieve peace.” He said peace would not come “from one day to the next.”
“It is very important not only to take the necessary policy steps but also to ready the men capable of taking these necessary steps so that they can open their hearts to peace,” he added. Benedict, meanwhile, also underlined that he hoped that Cyprus’s divided Greek and Turkish communities could find the “desire for harmony” to reach peace.
The pope was scheduled to meet in Cyprus with prelates from the region to set an agenda for an October meeting in Rome to build a strategy to stem an exodus of Catholics from the Holy Land, Iraq because of violence and economic hardship. The Middle East includes Christian communities.
Benedict also faces issues on the division in Cyprus, splits in the Orthodox Christian community and concerns over damaged Christian and Muslim houses of worship. Cyprus was ethnically split in 1974 when Turkey militarily intervened on the island after a coup by supporters of a union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared an independent republic in the north, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it and maintains 35,000 troops there.
The Greek Cypriot ambassador to the Holy See, George F. Poulides, said Benedict will be staying at the Vatican Nunciature, located right on the so-called Green Line in Nicosia -- the UN-patrolled buffer zone between bullet-pocked buildings and army sentry posts separating the ethnically divided communities. A government official in Ankara said Turkey would be watching the visit closely and may comment if there is a sign of political support for the Greek Cypriots or any allusion to the alleged destruction of churches in the north.
05 June 2010, Saturday
TODAY’S ZAMAN WITH WIRES ANKARA
