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The election of Benedict XVI was initially received in Turkey with misgivings and with openly hostile headlines in the press, of the type: “An enemy of Turkey has been elected”, or with some acrimony (stressing his membership of the Hitler-Jugend as a boy). This attitude is to be seen against the background of an interview given by the then Cardinal Ratzinger to the French daily Le Figaro, in which he had expressed some doubts about Turkey’s entry into the European Union, especially taking into account the fact that its population, its culture and historical roots are largely Islamic. The only article that took a very different line appeared in the Turkish daily, the Post, one of the most widely read in the country. The article, with the title “I love the Turks very much”, explains the position of Benedict XVI, who believes that “Istanbul is an important part of Europe. Turkey, precisely because it is a State with a different religion, must enter into Europe, in order to be a stimulus and source of richness. I love the Turks very much: so how could I be an enemy of someone I love?”. During his first audience on 27 April, Benedict XVI wished to explain the reasons for the choice of his name. And the reasons were the homage he wished to pay both to Benedict XV who had opposed the First World War and to St. Benedict, patriarch of Western monasticism, who exercised an enormous influence on the diffusion of Christianity throughout the European continent. But who was Benedict XV and how was he seen in Turkey and in the Ottoman Empire? Many Turkish journalists, on learning that the name of the new Pope is Benedict XVI, discovered that a monument to Benedict XV actually exists in the courtyard of the Latin Cathedral of Istanbul and wished to know more about it. Below the monument is this inscription: “To the great Pontiff of this tragic time in the history of the world Benedict XV, benefactor of peoples without distinction of nationality and religion, as a mark of gratitude, the Orient (1914-1919)”. Benedict had in fact striven indefatigably for peace, but his appeals remained unheard. So he wanted at least to alleviate the sufferings produced by the war. He also exerted himself on behalf of Turkey, which emerged from the war defeated. In the memoranda in the Archive of the Apostolic Delegation in Istanbul, now in the Vatican Archives, it emerges that Benedict XV asked the pontifical delegate Msgr. Angelo Maria Dolci to intervene with the French army to ask that Turkish prisoners be treated humanely and that no revenge be taken against them. He also had a hospital opened for these injured troops: 60 seriously wounded soldiers a day received treatment in it. At the end of the war the Turkish paper Ati (Future) opened a subscription to collect funds for erecting a monument in honour of the pope. The documents preserved in the Vatican Archives show that the Sultan himself donated 500 Turkish lira, and the hereditary Prince 150, while the Hidiv (governor of Egypt) contributed a further 500 (indeed one cannot help noticing that the majority of the donors were non-Christians). The Mayor of Istanbul thought that the statue should be erected in one of the main streets of the city, but Msgr. Dolci thought it more appropriate to install it in the courtyard of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, where it still remains. If the new Pope should ever come to Istanbul, he will certainly be able to see this monument to his predecessor, the only example of a monument erected to a Pope in a country with an Islamic majority.
