It is worth mentioning that, in the history of the Apostle
called by Jesus himself to "confirm his brethren in the faith"; Rome
was, in a certain sense, the third chair.
Like Benedict XVI himself explained in one of his Wednesday General Audiences (February 22, 2006), if the first seat of the Church was the Upper Room of Jerusalem, afterwards it was not immediately Rome but Antioch where, according to the Acts of the Apostles, for the first time the disciples of Jesus were called Christians.
Peter was also Bishop of Antioch, the third largest metropolis of the Empire at that point, before leaving for Rome where he met martyrdom. And afterwards Antioch remained one of the most important Episcopal seats of the early church although, already by the fourth century, the Chair of Peter fell victim to the first of a long series of schisms.
It then begs the question: who in the Catholic Church is the Bishop of Antioch today?
If we stick to the simple title, there are three Patriarchs in communion with Rome that hark back to that Chair of Peter: the Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai (who is a cardinal and participates in the Conclave), the Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Yoseph III Younan, and the Melkite Greek Patriarch Gregory III Laham. All of these three leaders of Eastern Catholic churches carry the title of Patriarch of Antioch; but nobody lives there, as the headquarters of the first two Patriarchates are in Lebanon, and the third is in Damascus.
So, rather than with the territory itself, the link is with the history of ancient Antioch.
In the modern city of Antakya, Turkey, heir of the ancient metropolis, there is a tiny Latin-Rite Catholic community. Since the mid-19th century, in an almost entirely Muslim context, it is the Capuchins Friars who support the parish and guard the Cave of Saint Peter, a 4th century rock-hewn Church that commemorates the Apostle's presence and was studied with great interest by the famous Franciscan archaeologist father Michele Piccirillo.
Therefore, if we look at the episcopal jurisdiction on this physical location, we have to add that we are faced with another vacant seat.
Antakya is part of the Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia, a territory with headquarters in Iskenderun whose Bishop was Mgr. Luigi Padovese, the Italian prelate murdered in Turkey by his Muslim driver on June 3rd, 2010. The Vicariate of Anatolia had already been marked in 2006 by another martyrdom: that of Don Andrea Santoro in Trabzon.
Shortly after the death of Padovese, Benedict XVI appointed the Archbishop of Izmir, Ruggero Franceschini, as the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Anatolia. Then, however, he never designated a successor as Bishop. And this, despite the fact that during the Synod for the Middle East in October 2010, Mgr. Franceschini himself had urged, with unusually determined words, the appointment of a new Apostolic Vicar for Anatolia.
"What we are asking the Church?" said the Archbishop of Izmir. "Simply what we are now missing: a shepherd, someone to help him, the means to do so, and all this with reasonable urgency". That was two and a half years ago, but Iskenderun (and Antakya) is still without a bishop. Waiting for the decisions by the new successor of Peter.