The Missionary Journeys of Saint Paul

Few stories have shaped the map of the Christian world as profoundly as the travels of the Apostle Paul. Setting out from the church at Antioch, he carried the Gospel across the mountains, plains and harbours of the ancient Mediterranean, planting communities whose letters and memory the Church still treasures today. The Acts of the Apostles records these travels in remarkable detail, and it is from Acts that we draw the familiar pattern of three missionary journeys followed by a final voyage to Rome.

Paul was uniquely prepared for such a mission. Born in Tarsus of Cilicia — a city he himself called "no ordinary city" (Acts 21:39) — he was a Roman citizen, a Jew "brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3), and a man at home in both the Greek-speaking world and the traditions of his fathers. After his encounter with the risen Christ near Damascus (Acts 9), the persecutor became the herald. In his own words, God "was pleased to reveal his Son in me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles" (Galatians 1:15–16).

The First Journey: Antioch, Cyprus and the Heart of Anatolia

The first journey began at Antioch on the Orontes, the great Syrian city where the disciples were first called Christians and which became the springboard for the mission to the Gentiles. Set apart by the Holy Spirit, Paul and Barnabas — accompanied for a time by John Mark — sailed first to Cyprus, Barnabas's homeland. They preached from Salamis in the east to Paphos in the west, where the proconsul Sergius Paulus came to faith (Acts 13).

From Cyprus they crossed to the southern coast of Asia Minor, landing at Perga in Pamphylia and pressing inland to the high country of Anatolia. Here lies one of the great themes of Paul's mission: so much of it unfolded on Anatolian soil. In Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe — cities of the Roman provinces of central Asia Minor — Paul preached in the synagogues, was welcomed by some and violently opposed by others, and yet left behind fledgling communities of believers. Retracing their steps to strengthen these churches, the apostles appointed elders and returned to Syrian Antioch to report "all that God had done with them" (Acts 14:27).

The Second Journey: Into Europe

The second journey carried the Gospel across a decisive threshold — from Asia into Europe. Travelling overland through Syria and Cilicia, and so through Paul's own native region, he strengthened the churches already founded. At Lystra he was joined by Timothy, who would become one of his most trusted companions.

Guided, as Acts tells it, by the Spirit and by a vision of a man of Macedonia pleading "Come over and help us" (Acts 16:9), Paul crossed the Aegean. At Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia, he met Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, whose household was among the first European converts; there too he and Silas sang hymns in prison and baptised the jailer and his family (Acts 16). The journey continued to Thessalonica and Berea, whose people "examined the Scriptures daily" (Acts 17:11), and then to Athens, where Paul stood before the Areopagus and proclaimed the "unknown god" to the philosophers of the city (Acts 17).

The road led on to Corinth, the bustling port-city where Paul stayed a year and a half, working as a tentmaker alongside Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18). It was to the communities founded on this journey that some of his earliest letters would later be addressed. Returning eastward, he paused briefly at Ephesus before sailing on to Caesarea and back to Antioch.

The Third Journey: The Years at Ephesus

Paul's third journey is marked above all by his long ministry in Ephesus, the leading city of Roman Asia and home to the great temple of Artemis. Acts records that he taught there for a considerable period — reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus — so that "all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord" (Acts 19:10). His preaching so unsettled the trade in silver shrines that it provoked the famous uproar in the city's theatre (Acts 19).

From Ephesus Paul travelled again through Macedonia and Greece, encouraging the churches he had planted. On the return, at Troas, he raised the young man Eutychus who had fallen from a window during a long night of preaching (Acts 20). Then, at Miletus, he summoned the elders of Ephesus for a farewell of great tenderness, commending them to God and warning that they would see his face no more (Acts 20:17–38), before turning resolutely toward Jerusalem.

The Voyage to Rome

Paul's final recorded journey was not one he chose. Arrested in Jerusalem and held at Caesarea, he exercised his right as a Roman citizen and appealed to Caesar (Acts 25). The voyage that followed is one of the most vivid sea narratives in ancient literature: a slow, storm-battered passage westward, a fortnight adrift, and shipwreck on the island of Malta, where Paul was received with kindness (Acts 27–28). At last he reached Rome, where Acts leaves him "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance" (Acts 28:31).

Anatolia: The Land Between

Read together, the journeys reveal how central the lands of modern Türkiye were to the spread of the faith. Cilicia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Galatia, Phrygia, Asia — these Anatolian provinces were not merely places Paul passed through, but the seedbed of the early Church, dense with the cities he evangelised and the congregations he loved. And at the beginning of it all stood Tarsus, the city that formed him. To see why Tarsus matters is to understand the human beginnings of the apostle to the nations.

Those who wish to go deeper may explore who the Apostle Paul was, the role of Antioch in the birth of the early Church, or the letters Paul wrote to the very communities his journeys founded — writings that turned roads and harbours into a lasting communion.

Remembering the Journeys in Tarsus

The Church honours Paul most solemnly on 29 June, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, two apostles whose labours and witness the tradition remembers side by side. It is fitting that his journeys — which began in the heart of Anatolia — should be recalled in the city where his own life began.

In 2027, the inaugural St Paul Global Week will gather pilgrims and friends in Tarsus and Mersin from 28 to 30 June, centred on that Solemnity, with the Feast Day programme broadcast live for all who cannot travel. It is offered simply as a moment of prayer, reflection and shared heritage in the apostle's birthplace. You are warmly welcome to follow the programme as it unfolds, or, for those who guide communities of faith, to learn about the Hosted Delegation Leaders initiative.