Peter is 26 years old and comes from Kranj, a small town near Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. He came here as part of a group of 8 young volunteers for a summer camp at St. Polycarp Church.
The said group, whose age range is between 19 and 26, is mainly composed of students. They came to the archdiocese where Father Martin Kmetec, also Slovenian, is the archbishop, in the first place to help with the ongoing restoration project, in particular the strengthening of the main building.
Secondly, they also wanted to experience a mission, to see how a priest lives and to experience what life is like in a country where Christianity is not the religion of the majority. Further, how to live among people of different cultures and how clergymen proclaim the Gospel and the teaching of the Church where it finds itself as a minority.
According to Peter, the life of the Christians in such a situation is very moving, to see people so courageous in matters of religion. “The Christians here are deeply devoted and their faith is very strong. In Slovenia, from my experience at least, it is possible to see or say that sometimes one can become indifferent or maybe even lose faith for a short time. I think because we’re so used to or take for granted religion in Christian environment, it can perhaps easily happen that religious practices start to become a part of everyday life, so that attending mass, prayer and reading the Bible loses its depth. In Slovenia, a large part of the population still identifies as Christian and Catholic, so it is not very difficult to live a Christian lifestyle, compared to Turkey. Coming here and seeing people so deeply devoted to God and so faithful to the Catholic community here was inspiring and motivating.” he said.
The young Slovenians arrived in Izmir on July 7 and left on the 30th of the month, i.e. a stay of around 3 weeks.
An adoration was organized at Saint-John Cathedral on July 20. The group also wanted to bring something to the life of the parish and the archdiocese. He thus proposed a simple adoration with guitar and some songs accompanied by passages of the Gospel and questions on which the participants could meditate. Turkish translations were provided and it was a great event. They were also able to communicate more or less with members of the community, for example with the sisters, with the people who come regularly to mass and who also help the archbishop. They also took a few trips together; they thus discovered Ephesus with the archbishop and Pergame with a parishioner. They also visited a mosque in Izmir with a seminarian.
At the end of this stay, Peter’s opinion on the life of a priest or a sister is different then what he thought of a typical. “Izmir is a very large city with an active archdiocese. It is therefore not a stereotypical mission. The aspects discovered here consist in bearing witness to a Church, to a community of Catholic Christians who live here in a minority and the purpose of this type of mission here is to take care of this community and to preserve Christianity in this region. It doesn’t look like a mission in Africa, for example, where the goal is more to help build a community and establish decent living conditions.” he explains.
Returning to their primary objective, the main task of these young people was to reinforce the main building of the Archdiocese in order to prevent possible damage in the event of an earthquake. They dug trenches about one meter deep along the walls of the courtyard and inside these they placed reinforced concrete structures in order to increase the resistance of this building against the earthquake. Their usual day began at 7:30 a.m. with Mass together, celebrated by the Archbishop. After breakfast, they usually worked from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. After the lunch break and a little rest, they continued their work from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. After dinner, they shared many interesting discussions with Bishop Martin before praying together.
Peter has completed his Masters in General Linguistics and is now preparing to enter the seminary in the Slovenian capital, along with another member of the team that came to Izmir.
