"In 1846, the Catholic Church of Latin rite, that had never led Antioch out of its sight, returned to our city with the Capuchin Brothers. The first to arrive was the Italian, Fr Basilio Galli. Tireless, active, he won the sympathy of people; he opened a chapel and a small school. The plaque at the entrance of our church reminds us how he paid with his life for his zeal: he was martyred on 12 May 1851, stabbed in the back in church by two murderers, just after he celebrated morning Mass.
He was Turkey’s first modern-day martyr. After 155 years, the second, who showed the same zeal, the same energy.
The blood of the martyrs fecundates the earth.
They tell us that now the Christian community in Antioch is the most alive of all in Turkey, the most dynamic and open to dialogue and ecumenism.
What will become, then, of that of Trabzon, once flourishing and now reduced to the bare minimum?"
>>> AsiaNews.it <<< Two months on, Christians don’t want “normality” after Fr Santoro’s death
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