Br. Bianchi, today at the helm of the Institute chaired by Padovese for 17 years, he also traced with his personal testimony the figure of his brother bishop, speaking at the commemoration organized online by the Tiber Institute on the tenth anniversary of his violent death. Luigi Padovese – said Br. Luca Bianchi – had a particular love for Turkey, which began long before his episcopal ordination, starting from his passion for apostolic testimonies and for the Church Fathers.

“He – remarked Br. Bianchi – defined Turkey as the ‘Holy Land of the Church’. Just like Palestine is the Holy Land of Jesus, for him there was a “Holy Land” of the first spread of Christianity. Suffice it to recall that Antioch of Syria, currently in Turkish territory, is the first place where those who followed Jesus were called Christians”.

Born in 1947 in Milan to a family originally from the Veneto region, Luigi Padovese had entered the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor at the age of 18. Ordained priest in 1973, after obtaining his doctorate at the Pontifical Gregorian University, he became a professor of Patristics and history of spirituality at the then Pontifical Athenaeum Antonianum. In 1987 he became president of the Franciscan Institute of Spirituality, an institution which he had led and “shaped” for 17 years. In 2004 he was elected apostolic Vicar of Anatolia. On June 3, 2010 he was stabbed to death by his driver, 26-year-old Turk Murat Altun. The funeral ceremony, chaired by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, took place on June 14, 2010 in the Cathedral in Milan.

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