Since 28 September the door of the church dedicated to St. Paul Apostle at Adana (Turkey), the only Catholic church in the town, has been closed and the two priests who serve it have withdrawn. The “drastic decision” to close the church was taken by the apostolic vicar of Anatolia and bishop of Antioch, Msgr. Luigi Padovese, under whose jurisdiction the church is placed; it is also the place of worship of the local Orthodox community. “We can no longer celebrate our religious services there due to the noise created by a restaurant and by other premises and houses built just to the back of the church”, explains Bishop Padovese in a briefing to SIR. He also invites the Turkish authorities to see to it that the law be respected. “There is in fact a law that prescribes that the minimum distance that should separate places of worship from adjacent buildings is ten metres”. According to the vicar, “the houses surrounding the church and the restaurant that blares out music day and night do not respect this provision and are therefore illegal. It’s now ten years that we have been asking the mayor to apply the law but so far we have only obtained promises and evasive replies. If our church were a mosque, perhaps the procedure would have been more rapid”. To this a further episode should be added: “in recent days a group of Salesian students arrived to celebrate mass. But the church’s custodian prevented them, because, according to him, written permission was needed. But that is not the case, because the introduction of entrance by payment in fact removed the need for permission to be requested. We feel ourselves concluded Padovese at the mercy of the arbitrary actions of the local authorities and that’s why I have asked the vice-prefect for a definitive and written answer to the question”.
