The announcement had already been made. Pope Benedict XVI was to come to Turkey in November, 2006. So, when Fr Andrea Santoro visited Rome in January, 2006, he handed over a letter written to the Pope in which he and three women of his parish in Turkey invited him to come and visit them during his trip to Turkey.
But the Pope could not visit Fr Santoro and his little flock of about ten Catholics when he visited Turkey in November. Hardly a week after he gave the letter to the Pope, on 5 February, 2006, Fr Santoro was murdered while praying in his church.
Fr Andrea was an Italian priest who belonged to the diocese of Rome. He was a member of the Fidei Donum (Gift of Faith) missionary movement that was born soon after Pope Pius XII had issued an encyclical on 21 April 1957, called “Fidei Donum,” exhorting the well-established dioceses to send missionaries to sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1957, about 1,900 priests from Italian dioceses have ventured to various parts of the world as Fidei Donum priests and eleven of them have been martyred, just like Fr Santoro.
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Fr M A Joe Antony SJ
