Sandro Magister
Fr. Andrea wanted to live in the Middle East “as Jesus lived there, with the humble gift of his life.” They killed him, crying out “Allah is great,” while he prayed. His letter to the popeROMA, February 7, 2006 – He had knelt down to pray shortly before celebrating the Mass in the little Catholic Church of Trabzon, in the north of Turkey, on the Black Sea, when a young man shot him in the back twice with a pistol, crying out “Allah is great.”
This is how Fr. Andrea Santoro, 60, of the diocese of Rome, a missionary in Turkey, was killed on Sunday, February 5.
As soon as he heard the news, cardinal Camillo Ruini released this note:
“A Roman priest, a pastor of this diocese, Fr. Andrea Santoro, who had been working for a number of years in Anatolia as a ‘fidei donum’ (gift of faith) priest, was treacherously killed today in the church of Trabzon, which was his assigned parish and where he was meaning to pray. All the diocese of Rome, and in particular the priests, who deeply loved and respected Fr. Andrea, the former pastor of the Roman parishes of Jesus of Nazareth and then of Saints Fabian and Venantius, are deeply stricken by this most sad news, and are lifting up intense prayers to the Lord on Fr. Andrea’s behalf and on behalf of elderly mother, his sisters, and all of his relatives. With this tragic event, a new link has been added to the long chain of Roman priests who have spilled their blood for the Lord. Fr. Andrea had intensely desired and insistently requested to leave Rome for Anatolia, to be a silent and prayerful witness to Jesus Christ in that land, in respect of the local laws. The diocese of Rome, amid great sorrow, is proud of him and thanks the Lord for this shining witness in the humble certainty that from this will be born new Christian life.”
The following day, Benedict XVI sent cardinal Ruini and the apostolic vicar of Anatolia, Luigi Padovese, two emotion-laden telegrams he had written personally.
The pope called Fr. Andrea “a courageous witness of the Gospel of love,” and expressed the desire that “the blood that he has shed may become the seed of hope for the establishment of authentic fraternity among peoples.”
But who was Fr. Andrea? And why was he killed?
The testimony that follows – published by “Asia News” – traces the essential features of his character. The author is an Italian volunteer in Turkey who knew him well.
“Like a nail embedded in his flesh...”
by Mariagrazia Zambon
It was Sunday and I had just finished teaching catechism to the 12 children of our parish here in Antakya, the ancient Antioch, in southern Turkey, when Father Domenico stopped me in the garden and told me that the bishop just rang: “Father Andrea has just been shot dead less than an hour ago.” Father Andrea Santoro! I can’t believe it.
He was a man full of determination and earnestness. Although I met him only a few times, for brief moments, when we did meet, our interaction was always intense, straightforward, centred on God, His Word, and Jesus Christ.
I was told that he had been in Turkey in 1993 when he stopped in Antioch for about 20 days. That was his first pilgrimage to the place he liked to call “the great land where God chose to speak to mankind in a special way.” And it was in the city where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians that he wanted to perform spiritual exercises alone.
He met the Orthodox Abouna who, as a sign of things to come, saw in him a passion for Turkey’s Christians and so gave him a tiny piece of metal from a sliver of iron that is said to come from one of the nails used in the Cross and is jealously guarded in the basement of the tabernacle of the ancient Greek-Orthodox church of Antioch. It was November 30, the Feast Day of Saint Andrew, and Father Andrea’s name-day. Deeply touched by the honour, he brought it with him to Rome.
It was like a nail embedded in his flesh.
His fascination for this land never left him, in this country he found “riches and means to enlighten our western world thanks to the light that God always cast on it.” But he also found that the Middle East had its own dark corners, its often tragic problems, its emptiness. And for this, it needed that the Gospel that came from there should return there once again, and that the presence of Christ that once was there, be renewed there.
Since then, he asked his superiors to let him go back as “fidei donum,” gift of faith.
Eventually, he did come back and it was in Istanbul in late 2001 that I met him when we both started learning Turkish. He was 20 years my senior and studying for him was difficult, but he never gave up. For him, learning the language was too important because it would enable him to directly speak with locals and be in touch with him.
He used to say: “Turkish is a very difficult language. I am last in class and I don’t know how things will turn out, but being last has its advantages. It helps you know what real, day-to-day humility means.”
Later, with a broad grin he told me: “When I speak this language, I experience poverty because I am constantly learning. I can only express a small fraction of what I would like to say and have to correct right away any misunderstanding that my limited grasp of the language may cause. I do so not only by apologising, but also by giving out Italian chocolate.”
However, he did also say that “in preparing my homilies, I realised that my limited command of the language forces me to focus on the essential. Being something new for me I can better understand the newness of the Gospel. Since my worshippers from different backgrounds – though most of whom are former Muslims – I am forced to go to the heart of the message and show its unsuspected riches.”
When he came to Turkey he chose to go to Urfa, in the south-eastern part of the country on the border with Syria, where for three years he was a silent presence, praying in Abraham’s birthplace, a city without any Christian. Everyone liked him, even the imam of a nearby mosque.
He told me that his presence “in Urfa and in Abraham’s village of Haran 45 kilometres away always echoed what God told Abraham: ‘Leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land I will show you, and I will bless you and all peoples on earth”.
Urfa, he said, is every day’s “beginning”. Urfa is God who with an intelligence, power and love greater than our own expressed his plans to us, asking us to be at his service. Urfa is the power of the boundless blessing, joy and fruitfulness that God guarantees. Urfa is the root and compass to know where to go in Turkey and the Middle East.
This city remained in his heart even when he was asked to go to Trabzon on the Black Sea to serve at Saint Mary’s parish church, founded centuries ago by Capuchin Fathers, which had been left vacant for more than three years.
Trabzon is a city of some 200,000 people. It has many mosques, but only one church serving a Catholic congregation of 15 people. It has a larger Orthodox community spread across the city and many women from Eastern Europe working in the sex trade. It also sees many young Muslims drawn to the church.
“Here, there is a world dear to God,” Father Andrea wrote in his newsletter Finestra per il Medio Oriente [Window for the Middle East] right after his arrival in Trabzon. The purpose of the publication, which eventually went online, was to “gather from this land the many riches God gave it and send from there to here the riches God created over time, so that we can interact with each other on human, spiritual, cultural and religious levels, enriching each other’s life, and counter the hatred, threats and war that are too often visible on the horizon.”
This was always his goal: “Open a window that would allow Western and Eastern Churches to exchange gifts, rediscover the sap that flows from the Jewish roots into the Christian tree, encourage a genuine and respectful dialogue between Christianity and Islam, and enable him to bear witness with his life and feelings, above all through prayer, the study of the Holy scriptures, friendships based on listening, talking, simplicity, his sincere believing and the way he lived.”
Eventually, distance separated us – a thousand kilometres between the extreme north where he was and the far south where I was. But whenever he could he would come to the monthly retreats the vicariate of Anatolia organised for the small number of religieux, religieuses and laity that worked in Anatolia in the service of the local Church.
Two years ago at Christmas time he told us about his concern over the fate of prostitutes, expressing his desire to do something for them in Trabzon.
“Once,” he said, “we walked by a club where we knew there were young women, mostly Armenian Christian. They invited us in for tea. Sister Maria was with me and she was wearing a cross around her neck. I told the women she was a nun. We chatted about their children, the monasteries in their homeland, how hard it was to live back home. One of them told us that she was a paediatrician by profession. A few days later, we were walking along the neighbourhood’s main street, praying. A woman who took her clients in a back alley saw Sister Maria’s cross around her neck and came towards us waving. She kissed the nun’s cross and hands, made the sign of the cross and hugged her, asking her if she needed anything. At that point, the pimp followed her, annoyed, but I told him the woman was Christian like us. Local clubs are full of women, often very young. What can be done? Every day, I ask the Lord to open a door for us, to lead some of the women away from that life, to touch the heart of some of the pimps, to send someone who can help us”.
The bishop told me that Father Andrea went to Georgia not too long ago to get in touch with the local Church to help for these women. There is talk that his murder might be connected with the sex trade mafia that traffics in Christian prostitutes from countries from the former Soviet Union.
Others believe that it might be motivated by politics and religion. They say that those behind the murder might be trying to trigger a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims, a conflict that in Turkey does not exist and has no bases, but which is enflaming other Muslim countries following the publication of blasphemous cartoons in Denmark.
But who could be more harmless and unassuming than Father Andrea?
I saw him two months ago in Iskenderun, at the see of the apostolic vicariate of Anatolia. It was our monthly retreat and we talked about the cross. He told us: “Often I ask myself: What am I doing here? And the words of John the Baptist would come to mind. ‘And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’. I live among these people so that Jesus can live among them through me. In the Middle East, Satan continues to destroy, remembering and loyal to the past. As it was at the time of Jesus, silence, humility, the simple life, acts of faith, miracles of charity, clear and defenceless witness, and the conscious offering of one’s life can rehabilitate the Middle East.”
After a long pause, he took off his glasses letting them hang around his neck and spoke again, calmly, as if talking to himself: “I am convinced that in the end there are no two ways, only one way that leads to light through darkness, to life through the bitterness of death. Only by offering one’s flesh is salvation possible. The evil that stalks the world must be borne and pain must be shared till the end in one’s own flesh as Jesus did.” Not one word more, not one less.
After he spoke silence fell on the room. Then he looked at his watch and got up quickly, apologised, picked up his small suitcase and left the room almost running. He didn’t want to miss the plane that would take him back to his Trabzon.
There he was kneeling yesterday, praying in his church. There a bullet pierced his heart.
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The online news agency presented in Italian, English, and Chinese – created and directed by Fr. Bernardo Cervellera of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions – in which this testimony appeared:
> Asia News
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The website created by Fr. Andrea Santoro in order to “foster respect for and peace with the Muslim world, without subtracting anything from the testimony and the full proclamation of Christian faith and life”:
> Finestra per il Medio Oriente [Window for the Middle East]
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The note released by the Holy See on Saturday, February 4, on the publication in Denmark and elsewhere of cartoons offensive to the Islamic faith, and on the subsequent violent reactions on the part of Muslims:
“In response to various requests for clarification on the Holy See’s position in the face of recent representations offensive to the religious sentiment of individual persons or entire communities, the Holy See press office is able to state:
“1. The right to freedom of thought and expression, which is sanctioned by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers. This principle obviously holds true in reference to any religion.
“2. Human coexistence requires a climate of mutual respect, in order to foster peace among men and nations. Furthermore, certain forms of exaggerated criticism or derision of others denote a lack of human sensitivity and in some cases may constitute an unallowable provocation. The reading of history teaches that this is not the way to heal the existing wounds in the lives of peoples.
“3. But it must immediately be said that offenses that can be attributed to an individual person or a media outlet cannot be imputed to the public institutions of their respective country, whose authorities can and must, eventually, intervene according to the principles of national legislation. Violent acts of protest are, therefore, equally deplorable. The true spirit of every religion cannot be diminished in order to react to an offense. Real or verbal intolerance, whatever its origin, whether action or reaction, always constitutes a serious threat to peace.”
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POST SCRIPTUM, February 9, 2006 – Here is a translation of a letter dated January 31 and written to Benedict XVI by Father Andrea Santoro.
The pope directed that the letter be published in the Italian edition of February 9 of “L'Osservatore Romano”.
Holiness:
I am writing to you in the name of some Georgian ladies of my parish, St. Mary's in Trabzon (Trebisonda) on the Black Sea, Turkey. They dictated it to me in Turkish, I have translated it for you exactly as it came from their lips and I give it to you on the occasion of my visit to Rome. I am don Andrea Santoro, a “Fidei donum” priest of the Church of Rome in Turkey, in the diocese of Anatolia, resident here for the past 5 years. My flock is made up of 8/9 Catholics, many Orthodox of the city, and Muslims, who make up 99% of the population. You, Holiness, are both the bishop of my native diocese (Rome) as well as bishop of my diocese of destination, as it is an "Apostolic vicariate." In virtue of this double title, I give you the letter of the three Georgian women.
*
DEAR POPE:
We greet you in the name of all Georgians.
We ask God to give you health in the name of Jesus.
We are very happy that God chose you as pope. Pray for us, for the poor, for the miserable all over the world, for children. We believe your prayer reaches God directly. Georgians are very poor, they have debts, they have no homes or work. We are without strength.
At present we live in Trabzon and work. Pray that God will bless us and create in us a new and pure heart. We do not forget the Christian life and we try to be a good example for Turks in the name of God so that through us they will see and glorify God.
We have many things to say and recount, but, “Inshalla [God willing],” if you come to Trabzon, we will be able to speak face to face. Your coming will be a joyful celebration. We pray and hope that God will give you health, peace and a Christian life. We kiss your hands. We will be happy if you reply and send us a photo with your signature.
You, as an ordinary father, pray for don Andrea and Loredana [an Italian volunteer who works in the parish], that God will give them strength and that through them the Church will grow and multiply in Trabzon.
Maria, Marina and Maria
In the name of the other Georgian Christians, we invite you to Trabzon on the occasion of your coming visit to Turkey in November.
*
Holiness:
I join these three women to truly invite you to visit us. It is a small flock, as Jesus said, which tries to be salt, leaven and light on this earth. A visit of yours, even if brief, would be a consolation and encouragement. If God wills… nothing is impossible for God.
I greet you and thank you for everything. Your books served me as nourishment during my theology studies. Bless me. And may God bless and assist you.
Don Andrea Santoro
“Fidei donum” priest of the diocese of Rome in Turkey
Diocese of Anatolia, city of Trabzon on the Black Sea,
St. Mary's Church
January 31, 2006
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