Churches

I met today with the professor I'm working with this summer on a project on sacred spaces shared by multiple faiths, in Istanbul mostly churches which are sometimes attended by Muslims and Jews, many of them hoping their wishes will be granted if they buy a key/are bless/collect holy water. We were surprised at the St. Anthony of Padua cathedral to find a different kind of sharing going on. It used to be all Italians running the show when my prof when to the church as a child. The priest, who spoke with an African accent (we attended the morning English language mass, which is followed by Polish and then Turkish in the evening), and all his attendants were black and the choir was all Filipino. After the service my prof asked the one Italian priest around in as tactful a way as possible who they were/whether this was a special group or two coming to run Mass today. He said no, this is the English language Catholic community in Istanbul. Congregants were also almost all black, Asian, or obviously tourists--American from accents I heard.

Then we went to a small incredibly opulent Greek Orthodox church whose Mass was attended by 7 people I counted. Just goes to show how the Greek population has crashed since the 1950s, and unlike Catholics they aren't getting an inflow of immigrant congregants.

Then I went to Istanbul's 4th annual Pride Parade.