Vatican City - The Roman Catholic Church is to begin a process leading to sainthood for an Italian missionary murdered in Turkey, Italy's top bishop said Friday, as thousands of mourners crammed into a cathedral for his funeral.
Mourners at the Saint John in Lateran cathedral in Rome burst into applause as Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the head of Italy's bishops' conference, announced his intention to begin the process of beatification for Andrea Santoro.
The 61-year-old Italian priest was shot dead at his church in the Turkish city of Trabzon last Sunday.
Beatification is the penultimate step to sainthood and the process begins only five years after death, to allow for a cooler appraisal of the subject's life.
Ruini said there would be no attempt to bend Church rules, but that he was "personally convinced that in Father Andrea's sacrifice, there are all the elements of Christian martyrdom".
The cardinal said that in Santoro's five years as a missionary priest in Trabzon, which like the rest of Turkey is overwhelmingly Muslim, "he continued to pray and to seek to do good, in respect of the local laws".
Ruini rejected "with contempt" rumours in the Turkish media that the priest was engaged in trying to convert Muslims to the Christian faith, saying they were "absurd and slanderous".
The murder has shocked Church and state in Italy, and in the priest's honour flags were lowered to half-mast at Rome's Vittoriano monument which houses a flaming tribute to Italy's unknown soldier.
A tribute from President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, read out to mourners at the cathedral, said Santoro had been "struck down by blind violence as he prayed, in the fullness of a life consecrated to caring for the disenfranchised, to solidarity and friendship between men and women of diverse cultures and faiths."