The Roman Catholic Church hopes a year dedicated to St Paul, born two millennia ago in Tarsus in today's southern Turkey, will bring signs of more religious tolerance in the mostly Muslim but secularist country.
Pope Benedict proclaimed the "Pauline Year", 12 months of events starting on June 29, to honour the great evangeliser of the early Church martyred in the year 64 under the Emperor Nero.
The event has taken on a contemporary twist in Turkey, where the state keeps tight control on religion, and figured in a German debate between Muslims aiming to build mosques there and bishops calling for more churches in Muslim countries.
The main issue in Turkey is a Catholic request for a former church, which was confiscated by the state in 1943 and is now a museum, to be turned back into a house of worship for pilgrims coming to Tarsus during the Pauline Year and afterwards.
"We think this could be a good sign of religious freedom in Turkey," Bishop Luigi Padovese, apostolic administrator for the Anatolia, said.
Local officials have cooperated in planning for the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims expected during the year and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan might attend an inaugural ceremony in Tarsus on June 21, he said.
A decision to turn the museum over to the Catholics, who say they would allow all Christian denominations to use it, would be a positive step in a country where cautious efforts at expanding religious rights in recent years seem to have been put on hold.
Mr Erdogan, whose AK Party has its roots in political Islam, raised hopes in recent years among Turkey's 100,000-strong Christian community by stressing greater rights for religion as part of a liberalisation needed to join the EU.
The only church in Tarsus is a simple mediaeval building with bare walls and no cross. Confiscated in 1943, it was used by the army and later as a museum. "There's only the building, with nothing special in it. Not much of a museum," Bishop Padovese said.
Local officials have long allowed priests to say Mass in the Tarsus church if they remove the cross and all other religious items immediately afterwards.
They recently stopped charging the museum entrance fee, something the worshippers resented.
But turning it back into a church would mean it could have a cross and icons whenever pilgrims visit it, Bishop Padovese said. "This empty building is not a church," he added. "Imagine how it feels to pray in a museum with no cross." (Reuters)
Cardinal Meisner, a friend of Pope Benedict, has said a functioning church in Tarsus would be "a strong sign of understanding and would help balance things out here in Cologne."