Pope Defies Security Fears to Visit Virgin Mary's House

Pope Benedict is unlikely ever to conduct a more intimate or hazardous mass in public than the one he held yesterday at the house some believe was the home of Jesus's mother, Mary.

As he sat, resplendent in white and gold robes, before a congregation that would not have filled the average parish church, he quoted from the autobiography of John XXIII, who served as papal nuncio (ambassador) to Turkey. "I love the Turks," his predecessor had exclaimed. "I appreciate the natural qualities of these people, who have their place reserved in the march of civilisation."

Benedict XVI, speaking just 11 weeks after he provoked outrage in the Muslim world with another, less flattering quotation, must have been aware that he had come to a sniper's paradise. The house of the Virgin Mary, the Meryemana evi, as it is known in Turkish, looks out over a valley to two heavily wooded hillsides. The only way in or out is along a two-lane road overlooked by crags and copses that winds up from the ruins of classical Ephesus on the plain below.

Turkish officials said this was the stage of the Pope's trip that had most alarmed the organisers. According to local people, soldiers began searching the hills a month ago. "But there are so many rocks and trees, they can't know exactly what is up there," one said.

The route to Ephesus, or Efes in Turkish, from Izmir airport, 45 miles away, lies across mainly flat country. The convoy of vehicles that brought the papal party was shadowed by a helicopter flying low beside the motorway. The rearmost vehicle was an ambulance.

Not everyone had looked forward to yesterday's events with apprehension though. At the tiny stone building that was the focus of all this attention, Sister Ania hummed merrily as she smoothed a lace cloth in the room where the Pope was to change. "This could be the only chance I get in my life to see a pope," she said. "My father in Warsaw is so excited at the thought I'll be on TV."

The credentials of Meryemana evi are shaky. The gospels say that Jesus's mother was entrusted to St John, and legend has it that he fled to Ephesus. Yet it was not until the end of the 19th century that the visions of a German nun led Catholics to take an interest in a structure that had earlier been revered by the Orthodox. It is barely 20 foot across, and consists of three rooms, each topped by a shallow dome. Only the lower courses of the stonework are thought to date back to Roman times.

By the time Pope Benedict arrived, a congregation of 200-300 Catholics had gathered. Some were from Italian families that had lived in the area since Ottoman times. Geraldine McGrath, who runs a tourist agency on the coast at Kusadasi, was there "because I'm Irish and Catholic, and the Pope's coming. We come here for the weekly service. It's our parish," she said.

Muslims, who revere the Virgin Mary, also pray there. Inside are several framed quotations in Turkish, so it was an ideal location for the Pope to call for "peace between peoples". But, if that were a fact more than an aspiration, his congregation, drawn from Turkey's 32,000-strong Catholics, would not have to face the "daily challenges and difficulties" on which he also remarked.

Earlier this year one of fewer than 70 Roman Catholic priests in Turkey, an Italian, Andrea Santoro, was murdered in Trabzon for reasons the investigations suggested were at least partly religious. Cinzia Braggiotti, whose family arrived from Rhodes in 1801, said: "For the first few weeks, yes, there was a bit of tension. But now there is no problem."