Youthful and vital minority” “

Sixty youngsters from Turkey will travel to Cologne to participate in the next World Youth Day (15-21 August). They come from Mersin and Izmir and are aged between 16 and 25. They are all parishioners, though there will probably be a few other youth of the Neocatechumenal Way who will travel to Germany with their movement. Representative of what is still the tiny Catholic minority in Turkey (in total Christians are less than 1% of the population), these Turkish youngsters will bring to Germany all the vitality and difficulties of their Church, as explained to SIR by Sister Columba Blumenthal , who together with the apostolic vicar of Anatolia, Msgr. Luigi Padovese, is organizing the journey to Cologne. “We don’t have the resources of other Churches, but we will bring with us, all the same, our witness to Cologne where we hope to meet large numbers of youth from all over the world”. How are you preparing for this event? “I wouldn’t speak of any specific or particular preparation. We have taken steps to translate the message for World Youth Day written by John Paul II, and then to have it distributed in all parishes and churches. Now that the school year has ended for the youth who will participate in WYD we are planning a couple of preparatory meetings which will help us to get to know each other a little better. In total the participants will be 60. We’ll be travelling by air. Our participation has also been made possible by the financial aid offered by the Church of Rome”. Apart from the youth travelling to Germany, there will be many others who will remain behind in Turkey. Are you considering any particular initiative for them? “Not directly. A normal calendar of events promoted within the local churches, parishes, dioceses or ecclesial movements is being proposed to them. It seems little, but it isn’t”. What do you mean? “I mean that to understand the situation of the Turkish Church we must not forget that we Catholics are a minority within the Christian minority. The huge distances that separate our local churches often make it impossible to hold meetings, which we would like to hold more frequently. And I refer in particular to the activities aimed at youth, almost always relegated to the weekends, free from commitments of education or work”. The word to the young: “Ready to depart!” There are those who read the Bible, those who meditate on the theme of the Day, those who enter into contact with participants in the WYDs in Rome and Toronto, and those who meditate on the Message of the Pope. According to Sister Blumenthal, “the Turkish youth who will go to Cologne do not lack the motivation to experience in a deep way what they call the most important youth event of the universal Church”. Nonetheless, admits Sister Blumenthal, “there are also those who confess they “don’t know much about this event”, though they also say how willing they are “to get deeply involved in it”. All of them hope “to find friends with whom to share experiences and prayers and to discover each other as ‘children’ of the Same Father and hence brothers”. “I have a great desire for communion with the other youth of the world and I hope to see a young Church full of faith”, says one. They are highly motivated young people who “wish to enter into dialogue and discover new ideas and experiences. Meeting different people and praying with them makes us feel closer to God”. “Getting to know each other – they say – enables us to speak of our problems, to help each other, and to make an effort so that the world may be more united”. They will travel to Cologne full of hope, but also burdened by doubts and problems. “We live in an Islamic country and being a minority does not help. We must be united, work together to be steadfast in our faith. That is the biggest problem”. Another problem is that “our parishes that are not well organized for the young and our liturgies are without life and music. We lack opportunities to meet each other and associate with other parishes”. These are situations that require time and patience for solutions to be found. But “nothing is impossible if we walk in the footsteps of Christ”. The motivations that prompt Turkish youth to travel to Cologne include not least the curiosity to get to know Benedict XVI, “a pontiff very different from John Paul II”, and the wish to “testify to him all the faith of the Church in Turkey”. “At Cologne the Pope will embrace the whole of humanity and through us also our country”, concludes Sister Blumenthal. “Young people already love him also for his pledge, declared more than once, to make concrete gestures for Christian unity and dialogue between the religions. We are happy that we will be able to meet him and contribute with him to peace in the world”.