August 28, 2011: Turkey’s government is returning hundreds of properties confiscated from the country’s Christian and Jewish minorities over the past 75 years in a gesture to religious groups who complain of discrimination that is also likely to thwart possible court rulings against the country.
The country’s population of 74 million, mostly Muslim, includes an estimated 65,000 Armenian Orthodox Christians, 23,000 Jews and fewer than 2,500 Greek Orthodox Christians.

A government decree published August 27, 2011 returns assets that once belonged to Greek, Armenian or Jewish trusts and makes provisions for the government to pay compensation for any confiscated property that has since been sold on to third parties.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to announce the decision formally when he hosts religious leaders and the heads of about 160 minority trusts, at a fast-breaking dinner for the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, officials stated.

The properties include former hospital, orphanage or school buildings and cemeteries. Their return is a key European Union demand and a series of court cases have also been filed against primarily Muslim Turkey at the European Court of Human Rights. Last year, the court ordered Turkey to return an orphanage to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

Some properties were seized when they fell into disuse over the years. Others were confiscated after 1974 when Turkey ruled that non-Muslim trusts could not own new property in addition to those that were already registered in their names in 1936. The 1974 decision came around the time of a Turkish invasion of Cyprus that followed a coup attempt by supporters of union with Greece and relations with that country were at an all time low.

Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted government seeking to promote religious freedoms has pledged to address the problems of the religious minorities. In the past few years, it amended laws to allow for the return of some of the properties, but restrictions remained and the issue on how to resolve properties that were sold on to third parties was left unsolved.

The decree overcomes those restrictions and helps scupper further court rulings.

“There was huge pressure from the European Court of Human Rights which has already ruled against Turkey,” stated Orhan Kemal Cengiz a human rights activist and lawyer who specializes in minority issues.

“It is nevertheless a very important development,” he stated. “With the return of properties and the compensations, the minority communities will be able to strengthen economically and their lives will be made easier.”

Religious minorities have often complained of discrimination in Turkey, which had a history of conflict with Greece and with Armenians who accuse Turkish authorities of trying to exterminate them early in the last century. Turkey claims the mass killings at that time were the result of the chaos of war, rather than a systematic campaign of genocide. Few minority members have been able to hold top positions in politics, the military or the public service.

Turkey is also under intense pressure to reopen a seminary that trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs. The Halki Theological School on Heybeliada Island, near Istanbul, was closed to new students in 1971 under a law that put religious and military training under state control. The school closed its doors in 1985, when the last five students graduated.

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By JONAH MANDEL
28/11/2010

Representatives take highly unusual step of using modern transportation to make journey to the Holy Land; commit to loudly supporting Jews. Representatives of the Amish community from the United States and Switzerland paid a visit to the Western Wall on Saturday night, where they asked the Jewish people’s forgiveness for their group’s silence during the Nazi extermination of Jews in the Holocaust.

Part of what made the visit special was that the Amish, a sect of the Mennonite Church that largely rejects modern technology, do not normally use contemporary forms of transportation such as the aircraft on which they made the journey to the Holy Land.

Representatives take highly unusual step of using modern transportation to make journey to the Holy Land; commit to loudly supporting Jews. Photo by: The Western Wall Rabbi

But according to an announcement issued by the office of Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, with whom the group met, the Amish delegates saw great importance in coming to Israel and expressing their contrition, as well as declaring their unreserved support of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

The delegation members stressed that they were neither seeking any kind of gesture from the Jewish people nor looking to proselytize – only to support Israel for the simple reason that in the past they hadn’t.

Rabinovitch was presented with various tokens at a ceremony in the Hasmonean chamber, including a parchment with a request for forgiveness in the name of the entire Amish community, along with a commitment that from now on, it would loudly voice its support of the Jewish people, especially in the wake of the expressions of hatred by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his extensions.

The delegation left Israel on Sunday.

Pope Benedict XVI named a senior Vatican official to run the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ after an eight-month investigation of the order. Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, an Italian who heads the Holy See’s financial office, will serve as papal delegate for the Legionaries. The appointment is the latest in a series of moves aimed at shoring up the church amid a worldwide clerical sex abuse scandal.

The order, which its disgraced founder, the Rev. Marciel Maciel, started in Mexico in 1941, has been scarred by revelations that Maciel sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least three children. The order, long favoured by the Vatican for its success in bringing in new priests, claims a membership of more than 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians in 22 countries, along with 70,000 members in its lay movement Regnum Christi. It runs schools, charities, Catholic news outlets, seminaries for young boys, and universities in Mexico, Italy, Spain and elsewhere. Its U.S. headquarters are in Connecticut.

The investigation of the order showed that the Legionaries needed to be deeply re-evaluated and purified to survive, given the enormous influence Maciel had on it, according to a Vatican report in May. It said Maciel, who died in 2008 and had been supported by the late Pope John Paul II, had created a system of power built on obedience and deceit that allowed him to live a double life with abuse going unchecked. It said his life was “devoid of scruples and authentic religious meaning.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, stated De Paolis would meet soon with the Legionaries’ current leadership and would himself decide how to explain his mandate and that of a church commission to study the Legionaries’ founding constitutions. Javier Bravo, spokesman for the order’s Mexico office, stated De Paolis’ financial background would serve him well and was an important qualification for the job.

Italian news reports have put the Legion’s assets at some €25 billion ($33 billion). Legion officials have scoffed at such figures but haven’t provided alternatives other than to say that its 2009 activities produced $40 million. “It’s a big congregation, a big task, a big responsibility, but Archbishop De Paolis has all the aspects needed to really help and build and work with the Legion toward a very fruitful future,” Bravo said.

The Legionaries welcomed the appointment with gratitude and said they would “put themselves completely at the disposal of Archbishop De Paolis.” In a statement, the order stated the practical details of his mandate would be defined in the coming weeks. It remained unclear what would happen with the cleric currently running the order, the Rev. Alvaro Corcuera Martinez del Rio. He met with Benedict last month.

The Vatican continues to grapple with abuse allegations, which began in North America but recently have spread across Europe. It is expected to soon release a document codifying instructions on dealing with pedophile priests. It is expected to also crack down on priests who prey on mentally impaired adults, sanctioning them with the same set of punishments meted out for clerics who rape and molest children, The Associated Press has learned.

The church’s internal justice system for dealing with abuse allegations has come under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations were long ignored by bishops more concerned about protecting the church and by the Congregation, which was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until he was elected pope in 2005.