Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL2639996820080526?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
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 in the mostly Muslim but secularist country.
Pope Benedict proclaimed the "Pauline Year", 12 months of events 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 German debate between Muslims aiming to build mosques there and bishops calling for more churches in Muslim countries.
The main issue in Turkey is a Catholic request for a former church, which was confiscated by the state in 1943 and is now a museum, to be turned back into a house of worship for pilgrims coming to Tarsus during the Pauline Year and afterwards.
"We think this could be a good sign of religious freedom in Turkey," Bishop Luigi Padovese, apostolic administrator for the Anatolia, told Reuters. "We have big hopes and our hopes have a firm foundation."