Yet Another Catholic Priest Attacked in Turkey

I suspect that we will now see more of Pope Benedict XVI taking on Islam and the conditions of Christians in Muslim lands, especially now that a FOURTH Catholic Priest in just this last year has been attacked (stabbed in this case) in Asia Minor. This is a rising phenomonon amongst Turks, a few having attacked on their own, others in "gangs of youths". Father Andrea Santoro was shot to death in February in his Church while praying by a young man outraged by the Danish MoToons. Another Catholic Priest was burned to death in his Church during "cartoon riots" in Nigeria during that period. Yet the tension in Turkey is rising, with surges in opposition to secularism and attacks on the few religious minorities left in Anatolia. Churches and graves have been vandalized and damaged for decades now, but the vandalism is on the increase. One can only hope that the "Defixiones", or curses promised to anyone disturbing graves left on the graves themselves will do some good. It is no accident that Christians in the region took up the practice of including curses on their tombstones for anyone out to damage the graves.

Here from The Brussels Journal is an excerpt:

"Fr Pierre Brunissen has been savagely knifed in Turkey – the fourth attack on Catholic priests in that country this year. His attacker has apparently complained about Fr Brunissen’s missionary activities. It is unlikely that Fr Brunissen was, in fact, proselytizing — the Catholic Church is not especially active in missionary work in Muslim nations, for the simple reason that it’s generally a swift road to death for both converter and the converted. Muslim orthodoxy prescribes death for the apostate.....

.....The grim catalogue of assaults on clerics betrays a resurgent paranoia within Turkish society – a paranoia that does not sit well with that nation’s pretenses to membership in “Europe”:

* The first priest attacked this year – and the only one to die thus far – was Fr Andrea Santoro. He was shot in the heart this past February with a 9mm pistol by a Muslim youth angry over the infamous Danish cartoons in an act of “religious revenge.” Fr Santoro died while praying in his church in Trabzon (itself ancient Trebizond): the killer yelled “Allahu akbar,” before firing twice into the priest’s back.

* Mere days after Fr Santoro’s murder, Fr Martin Kmetec, a Slovene Franciscan, was beaten in the Aegean port city of Izmir – former Smyrna – by a gang of youths angry (again!) over the infamous Danish cartoons. According to press reports, they seized him by the throat and shouted, “We will make you all die!”

* The next month, Capuchin priest Fr Hanri Leylek was threatened by a knife-wielding youth in the same city of Mersin that Fr Santoro perished in. The assailant, one Erdal Gurel, forced his way into the parish convent, yelling insults against Christianity and telling the priest, “You are not a human being! I will violate your mother, your sisters, your children.”

Another link to this story is here: Asia News with some good update links. The numbers vary depending on who I read, some claiming three attacks rather than four. But the general message is the same. In stark contrast to the tourism department of Turkey, whose slogan is "Turkey Welcomes You", I'm always forced to ask, "Oh, really?"