The Roman Catholic Church hopes a year dedicated to Saint Paul, born two millennia ago in Tarsus in today's southern Turkey, will bring signs of more religious tolerance to the mostly Muslim but secular country. Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the "Pauline Year" starting on June 29, to honor the great evangelizer of the early Church, martyred in the year 64 under the Emperor Nero.
The event has taken on a contemporary twist in Turkey, where the state keeps tight control on religion, and figured in a current German debate between Muslims aiming to build mosques there, and bishops calling for more churches in Muslim countries.
A Catholic request upon a former church, confiscated by the state in 1943 and now serving as a museum, to be turned back into a house of worship for pilgrims coming to Tarsus during the Pauline Year, became a real issue in Turkey.
"We think this could be a good sign of religious freedom in Turkey," Bishop Luigi Padovese, apostolic administrator for Anatolia, told Reuters. "We have big hopes and our hopes have firm foundations."
Local officials have cooperated in the organizations of upcoming celebrations. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan might attend an inaugural ceremony in Tarsus on June 21, he said.
A decision to return the museum to the Catholics, who want to share it with all Christian denominations, would be a positive step for a country where cautious efforts on expanding religious rights in recent years seem to have been put on hold.
Erdoğan, whose Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has its roots in political Islam, raised hopes among Turkey's 100,000-strong Christian community, by stressing greater rights for religion as a part of liberalization needed to join the European Union.
But a bid to scrap one constraint - a ban on Islamic headscarves at universities - has landed him in a legal clash with the secularist elite. By late June, the Supreme Court may have banned him from belonging to a political party.
The only church in Tarsus is a simple medieval building with bare walls. Confiscated in 1943, it was used by the army, later to be converted into a museum. "There's only the building, with nothing special in it. Not much of a museum," Padovese said.
Prime minister at ceremony
Local officials have long allowed priests to conduct a mass in the Tarsus church as long as they remove the cross and other religious items immediately afterwards. They also recently stopped charging the museum entrance fee.
But turning it back into a church would mean it could have a cross and icons whenever pilgrims visit it, Padovese said. "This empty building is not a church," he added. "Imagine how it feels to pray in a museum with no cross."
Tarsus Mayor Burhanettin Kocamaz said he had also received a request to build a church there. "We do not support one project over another, as we don't have the authority to decide upon that," he said. "We will execute any decision the government makes."
Erdoğan's office did not answer requests for a comment on how the government in Ankara saw the issue in Tarsus.
Catholic bishops in Germany have taken the Tarsus church issue as a part of larger effort of the Vatican, to have Muslim countries allow more rights for Christians in parallel to the freedom of Muslims building mosques in the West.
A delegation of bishops will visit the city in September; many dioceses are already organizing pilgrimages, Padovese said. Cologne Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who has criticized plans of the Turks in Germany to build a large mosque there, has written to Erdoğan to ask his help with the Tarsus project. He has also mentioned the possibility of building a new church in the city.
Meisner, a friend of Pope Benedict XVI, has said a functioning church in Tarsus would be "a strong sign of understanding, and would help balance things out here in Cologne." He has denied this was meant as an ultimatum to Ankara.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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