Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 12 October 2025

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

As I write this letter it is again Monday late and we are in our last city, Istanbul. Travel was challenging today, disembarking the boat before 7am, driving 1.5 hours to the airport in Athens, barely making our flight, then a one-hour delay taking off. We got out of passport control and baggage claim/customs finally by 2:30pm, then meeting the tour guide and starting a late driving tour of the city. It is a remarkable place.

We stopped at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. Someone in the group remarked how interesting it is that the most beautiful Catholic Church we have seen so far is in Turkey. It was at this church where Cardinal Roncalli (St. Pope John XXIII) served as Papal Nuncio during World War II and saved tens of thousands of Jewish people from being taken north into eastern Europe during the holocaust. He spoke later to the newly formed Secretariat for Interreligious Affairs at the beginning of Vatican II about how his relationships with Jews and Muslims during these formative years in Istanbul compelled him to lead the commission to write Nostra aetate, the Church’s Constitution on relations with people of other faiths.

It was at this cathedral where St. Pope Paul VI met with Patriarch Athenagoras in 1965 and rescinded the mutual excommunications of 1056 “to oblivion.” It was at this cathedral where St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis met with Bartholomew, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (the original name of Istanbul), founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine when he wanted to move the center of the Church further east to rule both Europe and Asia. A visit of Pope Leo to this very place may be planned for this November.

We talked about the central role of this one place in the context of 1,700 years after the Council of Nicaea, the last time that all Christians were united in one creed, the Nicene Creed we say at Mass, as well as the 60th Anniversary of Nostra aetate.

Of course, the context of Muslim Turkey is a difficult one for the Greek Orthodox Church. In an increasingly hostile environment, the Orthodox Church is struggling with few faithful, as in so many places in the world. Churches are shuttered and seminaries are closed. I had always thought this so harsh, how Patriarch Bartholomew must maintain a skeleton staff to remain in the ancient see of his ancestors. It is a vestige of a time when intolerance and cruelty were characteristics of life.

I also never knew that ever since the 1830 revolution of the Greeks from the Ottomans no Islamic mosque has been allowed to be open. Muslims, if they practice faith, must do so at home without gatherings. The mosques are in decay.

Looking back on our time on pilgrimage, we have had the time to reflect on many of the virtues and attitudes that are necessary for the journey of life. We saw and celebrated them in Saint Paul and his companions and followers, in the saints we celebrated according to the liturgical calendar of the Orthodox and Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. Those early followers and martyrs of Saint Paul who built the first foundations of the Church in this part of the world despite the great personal cost of suffering, danger and death.

We asked God to fill us with the same resolve, fortitude, fire, and trust that seemed to lead Saint Paul throughout his years of preaching and mentoring the next generation of servant leaders who carried the Cross forward to new disciples and places. We considered the humility and blamelessness necessary to make Jesus known and not ourselves. We prayed for you all along the way in the most beautiful and significant places we found.

Of course, you don’t have to travel abroad to find these things, they are just more obvious when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to circumstances and submit to the will of God, however that is made known to us.

You will find several pages of photos in this bulletin which give you an idea of the stunning beauty of these places, which must also have been a source of inspiration and hope in Paul’s faith in God.

The Lord be with you,