Antioch (Fides Service) - The feast day of Saints Peter and Paul in Antioch situated in southern Turkey near the Syrian border has always been an opportunity for ecumenical prayer and dialogue and a means of strengthening good relations between Christians of different confessions in Turkey.
While last year the day was marked with an International Symposium, this year the feast day of the Apostles was the occasion for a gathering “in the midday heat of a few thousand people, Catholic and Orthodox Christians as well as Muslims, to pray for peace in the world”, Maria Grazia Zamabon an Italian lay missionary in Turkey told Fides.
The celebrations were led by Papal Nuncio Archbishop Edmond Farhat, assisted by the Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, Bishop Ruggero Franceschini. Present the Orthodox led by Metropolitan Bulos Yaziji, Bishop of Aleppo representing the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch His Beatitude Ignazio I, with all the priests of the region and also some Maronites from Aleppo with their Bishop Joseph Anis Abi Aad. With them two Protestant Pastors and the head of the local Jewish community.
Significant the presence of civil authorities: the new mayor of Antioch Mehmet Yeloğlu , charismatic member of the party of the Premier Erdogan, the Prefect Abdullkadir Sari, the chief of police, the Muftì, the Rector of the University, mayors from neighbouring towns. “For years the will to walk together for peace has been a common effort, matured in a climate of reciprocal respect and translated in apparently small gestures but dense in significance ”, Zambon notes .
Antioch on the Orontes River is the cradle of the first Christian communities mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. Precisely here for the first time the disciples of Jesus are called Christians. In the first centuries of Christianity Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria, was the third city of the Roman empire after Rome and Alexandria, with almost half a million inhabitants. Today it is a town with 200,000 inhabitants. Thanks to help from abroad and in particular from the Centro di Cooperazione dei Cappuccini Emiliani di San Martino in Rio, the local Christian community engages in social and pastoral initiatives to prevent Christians, as it is happening, of being forced to emigrate to other towns or countries for economic reasons.
(PA) (Agenzia Fides 30/6/2004 lines 35 words 354)