EPHESUS (Turkey), Nov 29: Pope Benedict XVI began the religious leg of his four-day visit to Turkey on Wednesday by celebrating his first mass on Muslim soil and making a fresh appeal for peace in the Middle East.
“Love and peace be with you,” the pope said in Turkish at the start of the ceremony at a modest hill-top building outside the ancient city of Ephesus.
“From this edge of the Anatolian peninsula, a natural bridge between continents, let us implore peace and reconciliation, above all for those dwelling in the Land called `Holy’ and considered as such by Christians, Jews and Muslims alike,” the pope said in his homily.—AFP
