ISTANBUL (CNS) – Meeting leaders of Turkey’s small and varied Catholic communities, Pope Leo XIV asked them to embrace their “littleness” as they strive to be a leaven of God’s love in Turkish society.
Meeting the country’s Catholic bishops, priests, religious, deacons and pastoral workers at the Latin-rite Cathedral of the Holy Spirit and then visiting the Little Sisters of the Poor and the residents of their home for the elderly Nov. 28, the pope assured them that numbers matter much less than a clear witness does.
According to Vatican statistics distributed for the pope’s trip, Turkey has about 33,000 Catholics – less than 1 percent of the population. They belong to the Latin, Chaldean, Armenian and Syriac Catholic churches.
At his meeting in the cathedral, the pope noted the central place of Turkey in the early Christian community, hosting the apostles St. John, St. Philip and St. Paul and a thriving Christian community, as well as being the site of the first eight church councils.
“The history that precedes you is not something merely to be remembered and then venerated as a glorious past while we look with resignation at how small the Catholic Church has become numerically,” the pope said.
Instead, he said, Catholics must look at the situation through God’s eyes and then they will discover that “he has chosen the way of littleness, descending into our midst.”
As Catholics prepare to celebrate Advent, they will notice that in the Bible readings “the prophets announce God’s promise by speaking of a small shoot that will spring forth,” the pope said.
And “Jesus praises the little ones who trust in him,” the pope said. “He teaches that God’s kingdom does not impose itself with displays of power but grows like the smallest of all the seeds planted in the earth.”
Pope Leo insisted, “This logic of littleness is the church’s true strength. It does not lie in her resources or structures, nor do the fruits of her mission depend on numbers, economic power or social influence.”
While the Catholic Church in Turkey is small, he said, it is “fruitful like a seed and leaven of the kingdom.”
In fact, local priests have reported a growing interest in Christianity among young people in Turkey, a thriving community of foreign Catholic students and workers, especially from Africa and the Philippines, and a special outreach to assist migrants and refugees.
According to the U.N. refugee agency, Turkey hosts about “3.2 million registered Syrian refugees along with close to 222,000 persons of concern from other nationalities,” making it “one of the largest refugee-hosting countries worldwide.”
Pope Leo told the Catholic leaders that their communities have four important tasks: “ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, transmitting the faith to the local population and pastoral service to refugees and migrants.”
The pope asked the leaders “to cultivate a spiritual attitude of confident hope, rooted in faith and in union with God.”
But he also asked them to be very clear about their faith in Jesus Christ as truly human and truly divine.
Too often today, the pope said, “Jesus is admired on a merely human level, perhaps even with religious respect, yet not truly regarded as the living and true God among us. His divinity, his lordship over history, is overshadowed, and he is reduced to a great historical figure, a wise teacher, or a prophet who fought for justice – nothing more.”
But the Council of Nicaea 1,700 years ago, an anniversary the pope traveled to Turkey to celebrate, “reminds us that Jesus Christ is not a figure of the past; he is the Son of God present among us, guiding history toward the future promised by God.”
At the home for the elderly, Pope Leo told the religious sisters that they have been called “not only to assist or help the poor” but also to truly be their “sisters.”
“You are to be like Jesus, whom the Father sent to us not only to help and serve us, but also to be our brother,” he said. “The secret of Christian charity is that before being ‘for’ others, we must first be ‘with’ others in a communion based on fraternity.”
