When he first entered a church in his twenties, he felt insecure. “It took me a great effort to cross that door,” he recalls. “I kept asking myself if what I was doing was right.”
For the past few weeks, this 41-year-old man has been a Catholic priest. He was ordained in the cathedral of Berlin by Archbishop Heiner Koch, a fact that makes him a unique phenomenon in Germany: according to ecclesiastical records, there is no other Catholic cleric in the entire country with a similar background.
However, this does not mean he is an unprecedented case in the world. Antuan Ilgit, born in the German region of Bavaria to Turkish parents and raised in Turkey, was appointed by Pope Francis as auxiliary bishop in Anatolia (Turkey). This economist converted from Islam to Christianity in his adult life and is the first member of the Jesuit order with Turkish nationality.
Good Religious Coexistence in the Balkans
There are also similar stories in reverse. For example, Rabeya Müller (1957–2024), a Catholic woman from a small town in western Germany, converted to Islam as an adult and later served as an imam—prayer leader—in a liberal German Islamic community.
On this summer day in Berlin, Senad Mrkaljevic speaks of a life that has not always been a straight line. He was born in Brčko, a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the European region of the Balkans. “I remember that coexistence between different religions worked very well in my neighborhood. As a child, I saw an Orthodox Christian ceremony on the television of our Serbian neighbors and exclaimed: ‘I want to be an imam!’ The neighbor replied as a joke: ‘You better become a pape‘—which is what they call the Catholic priest there. We laughed together at that moment; years later, when the Balkan war broke out, that brotherhood would no longer have been possible.”
Senad fled with his family from the civil war destroying his hometown and first moved to Vienna, the capital of Austria, and later to Berlin. “It was not an easy time,” he recalls. “I had a hard time adapting to school.” Cultural differences and language were compounded by a congenital visual disability. Because of all this, the school authorities initially sent him to a special needs school for children.
He assures that he was always the “problem child” of the family. He is a tall man who today wears jeans and a black shirt with the typical white collar of priests. “My two older brothers did very well in Germany. My mother worried about me and would say, ‘What will become of you?’”
Muslim faith did not hold much weight in his home. “Curiously, when I was a teenager, I was the only one in the house who fasted during Ramadan,” he says, laughing. Perhaps, he adds, he was always a “religious seeker.”
“I didn’t want to lead a double life”
At 23, he began reading the Bible and attending Catholic masses on Sundays at twelve in the morning. “At first, I did it in secret. I lived with my older brother, and when I returned from church, he was still sleeping.”
However, eventually, the situation became overwhelming. “I didn’t want to lead a double life.” When he decided to receive Catholic baptism, he decided to inform his family. “For my mother, it was a particularly severe blow, and she tried to appeal to my conscience not to do it,” recounts Senad.
Despite everything, he went ahead and was baptized. Even so, he understood his mother’s doubts: although they were not very practicing, Islam was part of their cultural identity living as immigrants in a foreign country. “When the former Yugoslavia collapsed due to the war, Muslim faith united the community. Leaving it was considered a betrayal of one’s roots.”
Studying at a night school for adults, Senad managed to catch up on his studies: he finished secondary education and then obtained a Technical Baccalaureate. Afterward, he completed vocational training in administration within a home healthcare company. During all that time, his faith continued to mature: he wanted to be a priest.
“I spent a long time pondering whether this could be my path,” he explains. He knew he had to maintain contact with his mother, who continued to reject his decision. “I knew that for my mental and spiritual health, breaking off the relationship with her would have been destructive. My path would not have ended well.”
He began studying Theology at Sankt Lambert, a well-known German seminary specializing in “late vocations” (adults who decide to be ordained after having civil careers). He graduated in 2023. He assures that—”with God’s help”—he fought against all the obstacles of the educational system: giving up was not an option. “This is something I also want to convey to others in my current work,” he states.
A bridge between two cultures
For him, it is important to highlight one point: “Just as it happens among Christians, there are many Muslims who are not strictly religious and belong to Islam more out of family tradition than conviction.” For this reason, he sees himself as a bridge between both beliefs. “It was curious to see that my conversion and my priestly ordination ended up receiving the recognition and respect of my Muslim family in Bosnia and also of my siblings,” he comments.
His story fits perfectly with his current destiny: he works as a vicar at St. Edith Stein parish in Neukölln. This is a neighborhood in Berlin famous internationally for housing a very high percentage of immigrant population, mostly of Arab and Turkish origin.
“What I seek is tolerance among Christians, Jews, Muslims, and non-believers”, states Senad. To integrate with the people of the neighborhood, he likes to go with the parishioners to watch local football matches, Hertha de Berlín, and enjoys eating currywurst (the most famous pork sausage with curry sauce in Berlin, even though pork is a strictly forbidden food according to Islamic law).
His mother has already reconciled herself with his decision: a few weeks ago, along with his siblings, she also traveled to proudly witness his ordination as a priest.
Nina Schmedding (KNA)
Digital Religion / katholisch.de