c. 2006 Religion News Service
ISTANBUL, Turkey _ Fifteen hundred years ago, Constantinople was home to the world’s largest church and one of the five original patriarchates, or spiritual centers, of Christianity.
Today the patriarchate is still there, but Constantinople is now Istanbul, the church is a museum and the patriarch, Bartholomew I, is at the mercy of the Turkish government.
Pope Benedict XVI will visit Bartholomew on Nov. 29 during his trip to Turkey as part of a larger plan to bring Catholics and Orthodox closer together.
To the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians, Bartholomew, 66, is the “ecumenical patriarch,” the spiritual head of Eastern Orthodoxy and part of an unbroken chain of leadership traced back to Jesus Christ. But Turkey sees him only as the patriarch of the 2,500 Greeks still living in Turkey.
Orthodox Christians have had a strained relationship with the Turkish government. In 1971, Turkey nationalized private schools, including Halki seminary, where all Orthodox clergy were trained. Under current restrictions in Turkey, only Sunni Muslim clergy can be trained for leadership.
The international community _ including the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join _ has called on to Turkey to reopen the seminary. However, patriarchate representatives said their requests have been ignored.
“We send letters to Ankara (Turkey’s capital) explaining these problems, but we have never received a written response. There’s no dialogue with Ankara,” said Deacon Dositheos Anagnostopoulos, the archpriest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Turkish nationalists dislike having the patriarchate on their soil. In September 2004, more than 1,000 protesters burned an effigy of Bartholomew in front of the patriarchate’s headquarters, claiming he wanted to set up a religious state like the Vatican.
One month later, an unknown person threw a homemade bomb into the headquarters, blowing out several windows and damaging the roof of a cathedral.
Orthodox leaders in Turkey are puzzled why Turks think their tiny community poses a threat.
“The Turkish government doesn’t understand the term `ecumenical,”’ said Anagnostopoulos. “We’ve explained several times that this title has nothing to do with politics _ instead it shows that churches outside of Turkey and all the Orthodox in the world are tied to us.”
Benedict’s meeting with Bartholomew is the focal point of his trip to Turkey. It is part of an increasing number of meetings between popes and patriarchs since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s called for closer relations between the two churches.
Reuniting the Catholic and Orthodox churches is central to Benedict’s papacy and part of a vision that he inherited from Pope John Paul II.
KRE/PH END RANK
Editors: To obtain photos of Bartholomew and a photo of Bartholomew and the pope, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.
See mainbar, RNS-POPE-TURKEY, also transmitted Nov. 21.
