turkey" "
As is the tradition, a Vatican delegation, bringing a message of the Pope, arrived in Istanbul on 28 November, to participate in the feast of St. Andrew, patron of the ecumenical patriarchate, in the church of St George at the Fanar (lighthouse) on 30 November. Led by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, the delegation will be called not only to revive theological dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox, but also to finalise some details of the forthcoming visit of Benedict XVI to Turkey, planned for 2006. “The delegation’s visit is eagerly awaited Msgr. Georges Marovitch, spokesman of the Turkish Bishops’ Conference, said in a briefing to SIR because it forms part of the preparations for the future visit of Benedict XVI to Turkey, which as you know is planned for 2006, and because it helps to promote, with its bilateral meetings, the ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox Church”. The Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity has itself confirmed the high hopes placed in the visit: “during the conversations with the synodal Commission says a statement – discussion will also focus on the revival, after a interruption of five years, of the ‘International Mixed Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church as a whole’, decided during the pan-Orthodox meeting held at the Fanar in September, chaired by the Ecumenical Patriarch, and the imminent convocation of the ‘Mixed Committee of Coordination’ of the Commission”. These are two circumstances that “render particularly significant the visit of the delegation of the Holy See to Turkey, for the feast of St. Andrew 2005. This year, moreover, marks the 40th anniversary of the solemn Act by which Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I removed from the memory and means of the Church the sentences of excommunication of the year 1054 (7 December 1965)”. Already last year, the Catholic delegation and the Orthodox synodal delegation had, during preparatory talks, expressed hopes for the re-establishment of the International Mixed Commission of Theological Dialogue. Since then the two sides have worked on the composition of the delegations. This Commission, set up by John Paul II and the then Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Dimitrios I in 1979, has no longer met since July 2000. The programme of the visit follows the traditional scheme: participation of the delegation in the “Divine Liturgy” officiated by Bartholomew I in the patriarchal church of St. George at the Fanar on 30 November, in the presence of numerous delegations of the other Orthodox Churches; conversations with the synodal Commission charged with relations with the Catholic Church and visits to the other Christian communities in Turkey and to the Catholic community in Istanbul. As usual, Cardinal Kasper proposes to meet the Chief Rabbi of Istanbul, especially in a year that marks the 40th anniversary of the promulgation of Vatican II’s Declaration Nostra Aetate (no. 4) on relations with Judaism. The presence of the delegation of the Holy See in Istanbul returns that of the envoys of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who, as each year, visited Rome on 29 June to participate in the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.
