ARMENIAN PATRIARCH OF TURKEY CONDEMNS ATTACK ON CHURCH

ISTANBUL, FEBRUARY 16, ARMENPRESS: The Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, Archbishop Mesrob Mutafian, has condemned an armed attack on the Armenian church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator in Kayseri in central Turkey.

A statement by the Armenian Patriarchate says a group of people chanting “God is Great!” in Arabic and shouting anti-Christian slogans fired ten shots at the Armenian church on Monday. Monday’s shooting was the third reported attack against Christians in predominantly Muslim Turkey this month after the killing of an Italian Catholic priest and an attack on another Catholic priest.

Mutafian said the attack might have been prompted by the outrage in the Muslim world against the publication of caricatures depicting Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The church in Kayseri now holds two or three services a year and less than a dozen Armenians now live in the city.

“It is their most natural right for pious Muslims to express their resentment in the face of provocative caricatures published in Denmark, but I can’t understand actions of violence against the worship places of Christian citizens in our country,” said Mesrob II, the Armenian Patriarch.

On Feb. 5, Rev. Andrea Santoro, a 60-year-old Italian, was shot dead as he knelt in prayer at his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon. A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder. Four days later, a group of young men attacked and threatened another Catholic priest in the Aegean port city of Izmir.

The city of Caeserea, today called Kayseri, has an important place in the history of the Armenian Church. Once the most important city in central Anatolia, with a population said to be 400000 in 250 AD, it was where St. Gregory the Illuminator grew up, was educated, and became a Christian. After his conversion of Trdat, king of Armenia, to Christianity in the early part of the 4th century, it was to Caeserea that St. Gregory returned to be formally ordained as a priest, and until the year 373 all the early catholicoi of Armenia were consecrated in Caeserea.