For three weeks in January, 25 seminarians and two leaders from The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul traveled and prayed in the footsteps of the seminary’s patron saint in Greece and Turkey, experiencing new life in the rich texts of the Scriptures.
Learning about the early Church also deepened their spiritual friendship with St. Paul, who in addition to the seminary is the patron saint of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, said two of the seminarians and Father Evan Koop, a formator and assistant professor of dogmatic theology at the seminary who helped lead the trip.
The pilgrims said they also experienced some of the saint’s missionary zeal for evangelization as they found themselves, as Catholics, in the minority in both countries.
Deacon Randy Skeate, a fourth-year theology student preparing with five other seminarians for priestly ordination for the archdiocese this spring, said being where St. Paul made disciples and first planted the faith in the region deepened his understanding of his Christian inheritance and patrimony.
At the same time, Deacon Skeate said, the trip “really invigorated, I think in all of us, our engagement in this new evangelization, even in our own country. … These sites that used to thrive with Christians and then, just over the course of 2,000 years, history changes things quite a bit. What is constant is the need to always proclaim Jesus everywhere in every age.”
From Jan. 2-24, the third- and fourth-year theology students traveled more than 1,500 miles through Greece and Turkey, mostly by bus, to locations where St. Paul preached and made disciples. St. Paul, who is thought to have been about 10 years younger than Jesus was, made three missionary journeys through the region, roughly between 45 and 58 A.D. The journeys are recorded in chapters 11 through 21 of the Acts of the Apostles.
For the past two Januarys, the ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict prevented the seminary from sending students on the seminary’s customary trip to the Holy Land, said Father Koop, who helped lead this year’s trip with Father Scott Carl, the seminary’s vice rector and associate professor of sacred Scripture.
But the seminarians, including 11 who are studying for the archdiocese, who might initially have felt some disappointment at not having a chance to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in the Holy Land, received the trip to Greece and Turkey as a gift, Father Koop said. Many said it will enrich their priestly ministries, especially in their understanding of Scripture and as inspiration for their preaching, he said.
Indefatigable St. Paul
Typically, the two classes take separate trips, which helps each class bond, Father Koop said. But this year’s larger group was able to fill a bus, which helped the pilgrims, given the extensive travel involved. St. Paul covered so much ground, he said, that “We were exhausted after just three weeks in an air-conditioned bus with Wi-Fi.”
It was the first seminary trip to the region. The group didn’t follow any one of St. Paul’s journeys exactly, but the seminarians and the two leaders visited Greek sites including Philippi, Thessaloniki and Corinth, for which Bible (New Testament) epistles are named. They also spent time in Athens, the location of the Greek Parthenon.
In Turkey, the pilgrims prayed at St. Paul’s birthplace in Tarsus, traveled to Ephesus where not only St. Paul preached but St. John the Apostle and the Blessed Mother lived, and where it’s believed St. John wrote his Gospel. They also visited the locations of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation.
The seminarians visited a Catholic church, a mosque and the Hagia Sophia, which since its completion in 537 A.D. has been at different periods an Eastern Orthodox church, a Roman Catholic church and a museum. Currently, it is a Sunni Muslim mosque in Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople).
The seminarians also had opportunities to meet with Orthodox and Catholic leaders and visit museums and natural wonders in the two countries.
Though visiting sites of the early Church, the pilgrims had to celebrate many of their daily Masses at the site of ruins or in hotel conference rooms instead of Catholic churches because Turkey is predominantly Muslim and the majority of Greeks are Eastern Orthodox, Father Koop said. The group’s Holy Hours of prayer were sometimes taken on the bus rather than before the Blessed Sacrament, he said.
But the group had ample opportunity to pray and reflect at the sites they visited, Father Koop said. They were blessed by good weather overall, and the warmth and hospitality of the people, he said.
In Turkey, one estimate puts Christians now at less than 0.5% of the country’s population of 84 million. About 80% of Greeks are members of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Spreading hope
No one on the trip, including the leaders, had traveled in the region before, Father Koop said. Though the seminarians didn’t specifically talk about being “Pilgrims of Hope,” the theme of the 2025 Jubilee Year announced by Pope Francis, they were conscious of being on pilgrimage and spreading hope, Father Koop said. For some of the seminarians, that was felt in their first experience of being a small minority in a nation and culture that doesn’t necessarily share the Catholic faith, he said.
“That really was impactful,” he said. “They noticed (that) just when you get that chance to step in(to) a Catholic Church, you actually feel at home.”
Father Koop noted an awareness among the seminarians of non-Christian immigrants in Minnesota. Some expressed a desire to know more about Islam, he said.
Deacon Zach Ochsenbauer said he found it sad that the Turkish government restricted Christian worship and speech at some sites that are now government property. But seeing where St. Paul brought the Gospel to people who had not heard it before increased his desire to evangelize people who also might not have heard the good news, he said.
“It was a great experience just to have that fire burning a little bit in my heart (while) also knowing I’m going back to a predominantly Christian nation where most Christians don’t really know the Gospel,” he said.
The seminarians and leaders had an opportunity to “preach without words” when they stopped for a late lunch in a very small town during a long bus trip between the Turkish remains of Derbe and Lystra. When the travelers walked into the town’s only restaurant, most wearing black clerics, the townspeople, including the mayor, came to see them, Father Koop said.
There might not have been much faith sharing during the lunch because of the language barrier but hopefully the seminarians were building bridges across different cultures and faiths, Father Koop said. Being on pilgrimage often gives seminarians opportunities to encounter the Lord, sometimes in unexpected ways, he said.
“I think it helps just in the sense of you visit a site that you’ve always had in your imagination and you read about it in the Bible, and now you see it and it looks very real and maybe it even looks more ordinary than you thought it would,” he said. “It just makes Scripture come alive and you recognize there’s really not that much distance between us and the first Apostles and the type of world that they lived in.”
Strengthened in faith
Deacon Skeate said he had a profound experience of realizing persecution was possible when he toured the first site on the trip, Philippi in Greece, where St. Paul was imprisoned, as described in chapter 16 of Acts.
“On the very first day of this pilgrimage, we were stepping in the exact footsteps that Paul stepped on,” he said. “This was the prison building that he was imprisoned in and miraculously let go from because of an earthquake and he used that as an opportunity to convert the prison guard (who) was despairing because he didn’t do his job, keeping the Christians in prison. Visiting that prison cell of St. Paul really set the tone for the whole rest of the pilgrimage. … This was the real spot we’ve inherited this faith from.”
Deacon Skeate noted the persecution that was occurring when St. Paul ministered and evangelized in the region. “They weren’t publicly able to worship outdoors or go into a lot of the public squares, into the temples, and have Mass there because it was a persecuted faith. And so how did the first Christians worship? They gathered in homes and secret places outside of the city, outdoors and just kind of away so that they could still worship, but it had to be a lot more in secret. We experienced a very similar situation when we were out there,” he said.
He added that in God’s providence, Christians have inherited from Jesus a call that includes persecution. “This faith (is) from him,” he said. “One day we might be imprisoned for our witness to Jesus and Paul is a model of that for us. Even in his sufferings and imprisonment and a lack of understanding completely God’s plan for him, he still rejoiced in that place and (proclaimed) God’s praises.”
Deacon Skeate said he traveled to Rome instead of the Holy Land in January last year as a third-year seminarian, along with the fourth-year seminarians. From that trip he gained a sense of the Catholic Church’s universality. On this year’s pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey, he said he saw the beginnings of the Church.
Visiting the places St Paul traveled also helped him understand St. Paul’s life, Deacon Skeate said, including the roughly 10 years the Apostle spent being formed in his faith after his conversion in 36 A.D., before beginning his missionary journeys. That was not unlike the seminarians’ own years of formation for priesthood, he said. The pilgrimage also helped him and the other seminarians see how St. Paul conformed his life to reflect Christ’s, despite his flaws.
“And that’s exactly what priestly ministry is,” Deacon Skeate said. “We’re called to allow Jesus to come into our hearts and our minds and live within us and not just be an idea that we follow abstractly. Paul exemplified this.”
Deacon Ochsenbauer said he was also inspired by visiting sites he knew from Scripture. “It’s almost like a memory tool in a certain way,” he said. Learning about St. Paul’s weakness, he said, made him less afraid of his own weaknesses and gave him confidence that God will work through them.
In Ephesus he recalled that in Acts, chapter 19, St. Paul made inroads with his preaching only to incur the ire and persecution of silversmiths whose idol-making businesses were threatened by the Christian message denouncing idolatry.
“The amount of work that Paul did to bring the Gospel to others and the suffering that he went through really struck me and definitely I want to emulate that in my own life,” Deacon Ochsenbauer said. “We didn’t go to Turkey to preach the Gospel and in a lot of ways the government, from what we heard, doesn’t really allow that very much or there are some restrictions on what you can say and do. So, it’s kind of sad to go to those places.”
But Deacon Ochsenbauer said he was glad to have a chance to preach at Mass in a cave chapel in the Turkish region of Cappadocia, where St. Basil of Caesarea, a bishop who is also considered the father of eastern monasticism, preached during the fourth century.
“It was really cool thinking, this is (approximately) where Basil preached the Gospel, and how many people he inspired. In thousands of years (people) continue living a monastic life, and also just the people who lived in that area, the farmers or the townspeople, would have been influenced by his preaching the Gospel.”
The seminarians had opportunities throughout the pilgrimage to practice and offer each other support in their preaching. The fourth-year seminarians preached homilies at the group’s daily Masses while the third-year seminarians practiced preaching in the evenings. Gaining a better understanding of the Apostle Paul’s life and ministry as well as the timeline and geography of his travels will help the future priests’ preaching, Father Koop said.
The seminary might include some locations in this year’s pilgrimage in future January trips, including a potential trip focused on the work of Sts. Peter and Paul, Father Koop said. But to encourage bonding, the seminary prefers that each class take its own trip, he said.
While he hopes third-year theology seminarians can return to the Holy Land in the future, Father Koop noted that also as priests many of them will eventually have opportunities to travel there with parish groups and others.
Deacon Ochsenbauer said one thing he brought back from his pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey this year is a recognition of the need to preach the Gospel in and out of season, as Christ exhorts in Scripture. As he approaches ordination, Deacon Ochsenbauer said he also wants to better understand how to present the kerygma, or the basic Christian message of salvation in Christ, that many need to hear. He added that he might someday like to return on mission to Turkey to share the Gospel.
“‘Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’ is emblazoned on the front of the facade” of the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, he noted.
“The Church’s mission, its very bones, are evangelization and preaching the Gospel,” Deacon Ochsenbauer said. “Her message and our message, because our message is the Church’s, will be met with success, with opposition and persecution, but eventually the Church will go on and bring many souls to Christ.”
PHOTOS COURTESY DEACON RANDY SKEATE
