The new general spiritual adviser comes from Turkey

p. Anton Bulai

The General Managers have chosen the new Spiritual Counselor of the Magnificat Community. He is Father Anton Bulai, OFM Conv, an allied member of the Istanbul (Turkey) Fraternity. The decision was made over the weekend Jan. 25-26, during the meeting in Rome of the General Responsibles, elected last Jan. 4 by the General Assembly in Montesilvano.

Father Anton met the Community in 2006, during a General Convention in Montesilvano, to which he had been invited by Father Victor Dumitrescu, Spiritual Counselor of the previous three terms. By asking all those present at that Convention to recite a Hail Mary for him daily for his difficult ministry in Turkey, he had immediately won everyone’s sympathy. Since then, he has welcomed the Community to his parish of Sent Antuan in central Istanbul. And after a long but determined journey, in which together with the first group he attended the entire formation journey, he celebrated the covenant with the Fraternity’s first members in 2018.

Class of 1965, of Romanian nationality, born in Valea Mare, Faraoani (Bacău), the Community’s new spiritual counselor has an impressive resume.

After an initial attempt to enter the seminary, in Alba Iulia, he was expelled by the communist regime of the time. He managed to enter the postulancy of the Friars Minor Conventual, in Nisiporeşti, only in 1990, following the collapse of the communist regime, and from that time his formation took place completely in Italy. He received his baccalaureate and license in Fundamental Theology from the Theological Institute of Assisi and was ordained a priest by Cardinal Carlo Furno in the Lower Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi on April 19, 1997.

He has been in Turkey since 1998, first as pastor, until 2022, of Sent Antuan Catholic Church in Istanbul, then as pastor of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Büyükdere, on the outskirts of Istanbul, on the banks of the Bosphorus.

In 2018 he was appointed Provincial Custos of the Orient and Holy Land, a position he still holds.

In his rich and varied ministry, he served from 2010 to 2018 as Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference of Turkey. Previously, he was Vice Chancellor and then Chancellor of the Apostolic Vicariate of Istanbul; Judge at the Inter-ritual and Inter-regional Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the Bishops’ Conference of Turkey; National Director for International Eucharistic Congresses (2013-2020). A member of the Commission for Catechesis and Catechumenate, he was also responsible for the Neocatechumenal Way in Sent Antuan Parish and spiritual director of Legio Mariae and Couples for Christ.