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Masked Assailants Attack Italian Church In Turkey, Killing One

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

ISTANBUL (Worthy News) – Pope Francis on Sunday condemned an attack by masked assailants who opened fire during Sunday Mass at an Italian church in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, killing one person.

The attack at the ‘Congregation of the Church of the Nativity of Mary,’ also known as Santa Maria Draperis Catholic Church in Istanbul’s Sariyer district, killed a man who while attended the service, said Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

“A comprehensive investigation was launched on the matter, and work has been started to capture the attackers,” Yerlikaya said, adding that police were trying to capture the gunmen.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan called the church’s priest, a local administrator from his ruling party, and Poland’s consul general in Istanbul to offer his condolences, his office said.

The victim’s nephew identified the man who died as Tuncer Cihan and denied suggestions by authorities that he, but not the church, had been the target.

Pope Francis decried the attack and told the faithful in Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square: “l express my sympathy to the community of St. Mary Draperis Church in Istanbul, which suffered an armed attack during Mass that left one person dead and several wounded.”

CHRISTIANS SHOCKED

The shootings in Istanbul shocked the Christian community in the mainly Muslim nation, explained local Bishop Massimiliano Palinuro.

He said, “We ask for greater security and for the safety of the faithful, of the Christian community, which perseveres in the faith and courageously faces very long journeys at times to attend the Eucharistic celebration.”

The bishop added that an investigation so far suggested “a religiously motivated attack, a motivation of religious intolerance.”

There have been several, sometimes deadly, attacks against churches and missionaries in recent years amid rising Islamist extremism in Turkey, where Christians make up less than 2 percent of the mainly Muslim population of nearly 84 million.

Last December, Turkish security forces reportedly detained 32 suspects over alleged links with the Islamic State group, who they said planned attacks on churches and synagogues

One of the bloodiest attacks targeting Christians this century was in the city of Malatya, where Necati Aydın, Uğur Yüksel, and Tilmann Geske were killed for their faith in Christ by men who pretended to be interested in the Gospel, according to investigators.

BIBLE STUDY

The three men were tortured and killed on April 18, 2007, while gathering for a Bible study in the office of the Bible publishing house where they worked, officials said.

The previous year, Andrea Santoro, the missionary priest of Santa Maria Church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, was murdered on February 5, 2006.

In 1981, a suspected Turkish ultranationalist shot Pope John Paul II in the middle of Vatican City.

The pontiff survived the attempt, and the attacker, Mehmet Ali Agca, was apprehended and sentenced to life in prison.

He was pardoned in 2000 at the pope’s request and later said he had converted to Roman Catholicism.