Turkey: The forgotten Holy Land
ACN is helping the Archdiocese of Izmir to maintain the Christian presence in Turkey.
Archbishop Martin Kmetec of Izmir believes that Turkey is the “forgotten Holy Land.” “The Church of Izmir is the only one of the Seven Churches of Revelation to survive to this day,” explains the Slovenian-born Franciscan during a visit to the international headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).
The ancient city of Ephesus, which includes the House of the Virgin Mary and St. John’s tomb, is also located in the archdiocese. It is the land where St. Paul and St. John first preached the Gospel. But despite this rich heritage, there are only “150,000 Christians among the approximately 85 million people living in Turkey,” says the archbishop.
The land of martyrs
Archbishop Kmetec has spent the last 22 years in Turkey and believes that the Church has a duty to maintain a presence in the country. “We owe this to Christ, to history, and to the martyrs,” the archbishop told ACN. The city of Izmir is where St. Polycarp was martyred in the second century and was the birthplace of Polycarp’s pupil, St. Irenaeus, who later became the bishop of Lyons.
To maintain the Christian presence in this land of martyrs, ACN is assisting the Archdiocese of Izmir. The charity is supporting the renovation of the Church of St. Polycarp, damaged by an earthquake in October 2020 that devastated Izmir, killing more than a hundred people. St. Polycarp was constructed by French Capuchins in 1625 and is at the heart of the Christian community in Izmir. Additionally, ACN is funding the renovation of a Dominican church in Konak, a district of Izmir, which was also damaged in the 2020 earthquake.
Keeping the light of Christianity alive
Despite covering an estimated 14,671 square miles, the Archdiocese of Izmir is home to only 5,000 Catholics. For a long time, most of the Catholic faithful were Levantines, says Archbishop Kmetec. The Levantines are descendants of Italian, French, and other European Catholics who settled in the region during the days of the Ottoman Empire, but due to emigration, their number is in continuous decline. According to the archbishop, that decline has been offset in recent years by “the migration of Catholics from Africa and Asia to Turkey.”
Given the small number of Catholics in his archdiocese, the archbishop says that one of his main priorities is to “keep the light of Christianity alive.” But the archdiocese does not have the necessary funds to maintain all its churches and buildings, so the aid from ACN is a lifeline here — in this land so important to the history of the Early Church, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians.
Over the last five years, ACN has funded 12 projects in the Archdiocese of Izmir for a total of $530,000. These projects include the renovation of churches damaged by earthquakes, emergency aid for Christian refugees from the Middle East and Africa, the provision of catechetical material, and the support of seminarians’ formation.
—Conn McNally
