was about to leave for Cyprus, met with Benedict XVI. But he was killed the day before, Thursday, June 3, the feast of Corpus Christi.
Luigi Padovese, 64, of Milan, a Capuchin Franciscan, loved and walked step by step, Turkey, first as a researcher and professor of Patristics and Dean of the Pontifical University of Rome Antonianum. In this role more than twenty symposia sponsored study on St. Paul in Tarsus, and St. John at Ephesus. Since November 2004 he was bishop, apostolic vicar for Anatolia, based in Iskendurun. He was president of the bishops' conference.
His reading of the political, cultural and religious identity of Turkey was very realistic, far from the postcard dream painted by the foreign minister in Ankara.
MissiOnLine agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions of Milan put on the net after his assassination a lecture he gave in 2007 that illuminates the plight of the Christians living in that country.
In the end, Bishop Padovese summed up - "to avoid easy Irene" - the gulf between the Christian vision of God from the Muslim
"Great is the distance between the two religions. It must first know that Islam we consider the final revelation, more comprehensive and rational. It follows that those who follow it are not in a position of inferiority; become a Christian, a Muslim, it means regressing to a lower state. In those circumstances, require reciprocity in relation to religious freedom is a myth. This may require a Muslim in a Christian country, but not the reverse. Concretely, the freedom of conscience does not exist in Islam and the exercise of other religions is not free, but is tolerated.
"For Jews and Christians, God created man 'in his image and likeness'. For Islam, this seems absurd, because it contrasts with the absolute transcendence of God In fact, this verse of Genesis is not in the Koran, which also contains the biblical story of creation. The reason is that God can not escape from its isolation. The boundary between God and man remains impassable with the result that the former is too transcendent to be able to love and be loved. Only the mystical Sufi - presumably Christian influences - have put the emphasis on God's love for man and man to God
"Another consequence concerns the concept of human dignity, which for Christians and Jews is based from the same biblical doctrine of being in the image and likeness Just to exemplify God, look at how the struggle for the recognition of human dignity and freedom he found in the Christian motivation and deep impulses from the 'family' woven by God with man (male and female!) and restored in Christ. The theologies that want to free people from different modern-day slavery might not find their ultimate foundation in the text of Genesis (1, 26): 'Let us make man in our image and likeness'? Not so for Islam, which derives all its laws from the Quran. Just considering this closeness between God and man, then mediated by Christ, we understand how the early Christian ethics is configured as an answer to this faith in God as partners not as an adaptation to a standard. The thing is all the more clear when we observe that among the 99 titles reserved for God the Father is missing in Islam, and therefore lacks a defining principle of personal moral Christian. "
Certainly, Bishop Padovese had no difficulty to understand and share the full lecture in Regensburg Pope Joseph Ratzinger.
On 5 February, the fourth anniversary of the killing of Don Andrea Santoro in Trabzon, he told Vatican Radio:
"Don Andrea was killed as a symbol, as a Catholic priest. It was not the only person killed, but we wanted to hit the symbol that the person represented: recall at this moment, in the year dedicated to the priests, is to remind all of us who follow Christ can reach even the offer of his own blood. "
And in a speech in Venice in October 2009:
"The tragic death of Don Andrea, the Armenian journalist Hrant Kink, Malatia of the three Protestant missionaries have brought to the fore the reality of Christianity that still exists in Turkey and claim full rights of citizenship.
"If we accept as Christians not to appear, it being an insignificant presence in the fabric of the country, there would be difficulties but we are realizing that this is a road of no return, that does not do justice to the Christian history of these countries where Christianity was born and flourished, is a road that would not do justice to the thousands of martyrs in this land we have left testimony of their blood " .
Article in L'Espresso Blog
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