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July 3, 2006

Turkey: Catholic Priest Stabbed By Muslim

On Sunday, 5 February, at the height of the "cartoon crisis", 60-year old Father Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest, was praying in his church in Trabzon, Turkey, by the Black Sea Coast, when he was shot twice in the back. Father Santoro died. The perpetrator, known only as Oguz A, was indicted and began his trial on May 15.

Yesterday, another priest was attacked in Turkey. According to Hurriyet, Australia's Daily Telegraph and Associated Press via Yahoo News, Jerusalem Post, the Times and the BBC, Father Brunissen (pictured) was stabbed in the hip and leg while walking on a main street in Samsun, a town on the Black Sea Coast, west of Trabzon.

The man who stabbed the priest was a mentally ill individual called Nuran, who sometimes visited the church, Brunissen told investigators. Nuran, a Muslim, was arrested, and said to police that the 74-year old priest had ordered him to take Bibles from place to place. 47-year old Nuran further alleged that the priest had been pressuring him to convert from Islam to Christianity, and had offered him money to do so.

According to Monsignor Luigi Padovese, apostolic vicar for Anatolia, Brunissen had lost a lot of blood in the attack. Father Brunissen was priest at the Mater Dolorosa church in Samsun.

The attack on Father Brunissen was the third assault upon a priest this year. Shortly after the shooting of Father Santoro in February, a Slovenian priest was seized by the throat by young Turkish nationalists, and thrown into a garden in the Western city of Izmir, on the Aegean coast. The assailants were shouting "We will kill you!" and "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is Great). Also in Izmir, a church was hit with a small firebomb thrown at its roof. The arsonist said he was outraged by the Danish cartoons of the so-called prophet Mohammed.

Monsignor Padovese said of Fr Brunissen's stabbing: "I hope this has nothing to with Islamic fundamentalism. The climate has changed. ... It is the Catholic priests that are being targeted."

After Father Santoro's death, Father Brunissen took over the services at the Santa Maria church in Trabzon, which had only a congregation of about a dozen people. In April, Der Spiegel wrote that once a month, Father Brunissen travelled 156 miles by bus to Trabzon, to attend to the small congregation at Santoro's church, which had been founded by Capuchin monks, 150 years ago, with the blessing of the Ottomans.

There are about 100,000 Christians in Turkey, But for church communities in the country, which wishes to join the European Union, there are few rights. When Monsignor Podovese tried to gain two work permits for church employees in Trabzon, he was turned down by the interior ministry, because officially, the Catholic Church does not exist. Padovese said: "That's the paradox. We are here, but legally we don't exist."

UPDATE: According to AKI, Father Brunissen was released from hospital today. The full name of his assailant is Atilla Nuran, a schizophrenic who has known the priest for eight years.

Nuran has told police that he asked Father Brunissen to lend him 30 Euros ($38), which the priest had done. Nuran claimed: "Brunissen gave me the money and yesterday wanted it back. I refused, since I had no money. We started arguing. I was angry, and also thought that he was using me in his missionary activities, and that's why I stabbed him."

Fr Brunissen said yesterday: "I asked him to pay his debt, we argued, and he attacked me."

The elderly priest is well-respected within his community, and a local butcher said that during Ramadan, the lunar month when Muslims are not allowed to eat or cook from sunrise to sunset, Brunissen would invite Muslims for dinner.

Atilla Nuran held a one-man protest against the Danish cartoons outside the Mater Dolorosa church, during the "crisis" which sent a large portion of the Muslim world into collective insanity.

Father Brunissen is said to be retiring in September, and then he will return to France, his native country.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 3, 2006 7:00 AM

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