The Pope asked Turkish Catholics to cooperate with Muslims “to value what unites us, break down the walls of prejudice and mistrust, and promote knowledge and mutual respect.” He did this during the only public mass in Türkiye, which … He celebrated it in a sports hall in front of about 4,000 people. “All too often, religion is used to justify wars and atrocities,” he lamented during his sermon.
99% of the population of this country are Muslims. The number of Christians is about 0.2%, of whom less than half are Catholics. The spokesman for the Catholic Church in Turkey, Father Claudio Monge, explained to ABC, “In terms of numbers, it can be said that there are about 100,000 baptized people in the country, of whom about 35,000 are Catholics, but these are very approximate numbers.” “The image of Catholics is changing a lot. “I think half of them are Turks, and the other half are immigrants,” Monge says.
The Mass in Lyon was attended by about 4,000 people, four times the number celebrated in this country by his predecessors Benedict XVI in 2006 and Francis in 2014. Masses were then held in the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, this time in a sports hall. Most of the pilgrims were Catholics, but there were also representatives of Christian churches and even Muslims who cooperated with Catholic institutions or had Catholic families. There were also many Spanish families and military personnel staying at the NATO base in Izmir.
Meeting between Christian churches
The ceremony included elements of other Christian traditions in the city, such as a choir from the Armenian Apostolic Church that welcomed the Pope, and the presence of representatives of the Orthodox and Protestant churches in the front row, as a gesture of courtesy. As a symbolic legacy of this visit, the Pope charged Catholics to be the architects of “peace, unity and reconciliation” and to “nurturing, strengthening and expanding bridges” within the Church itself, with other Christians in this country and with Muslims. Aside from relations with Muslims and ecumenism with the rest of Christians, internal unity is not as simple as it seems because “within this Church there are four different liturgical traditions, namely Latin, Armenian, Chaldean and Syriac,” which also constitutes a source of misunderstanding and jealousy between the communities.
During the closed meeting he held this Saturday with leaders of Christian churches, the Pope pointed to the year 2033 as an important date to take important steps for unity among Christians on the occasion of the 2000th anniversary of the Resurrection of Christ. The spokesman said: “The Pope invited them to walk together on the spiritual path that leads to the Jubilee of Redemption in 2033, with the aim of returning to Jerusalem, to the Upper Room, the place of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, a journey that leads to complete unity.” A new goal is to continue the momentum they have gained by celebrating together the 1,700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.