Catholic Priest Stabbed, Hurt in Turkey

12.16.07 -- 6:48 AM

By Associated Press

A Catholic priest was stabbed in the stomach and hospitalized Sunday in the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in Turkey, officials said.

The priest, Adriano Franchini, was in surgery, Italian embassy official Antonino Maggiore said. The state-run Anatolia news agency said Franchini was stabbed in the stomach but was not in life-threatening condition.

There was no immediate information on the motive of the attack or how it had happened.

The priest heads the Church of St. Mary in Ephesus but was in the nearby port city of Izmir at the time of the attack, Maggiore said.

In February 2006, at a time of widespread anger in the Islamic world over the publication in European newspapers of caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a 16-year-old boy shot a Catholic priest to death as he knelt in prayer inside his church in the Black Sea city of Trabzon.

Following that murder, a Catholic priest was attacked and threatened in the Aegean port city of Izmir, and another was stabbed in the Black Sea port of Samsun. In November this year, an Assyrian cleric was abducted in southeast Turkey and rescued by security forces.

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