“This visit, paid at the express invitation of the Orthodox archbishop of Athens and all Greece, Christodoulos, assumes great importance in the context of the improvement of relations between the two Churches”: that’s the comment made to SirEurope by the president of the Greek Episcopal Conference, Msgr. Nikolaos Foskolos, on the visit that Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the pontifical Council for Christian Unity, is paying to Greece from 10 to 14 February. This visit reciprocates the visit to Rome by a delegation of the Greek Orthodox Church in March 2002, and may be considered “a result of the journey made by John Paul II to Greece in May 2001”. Nonetheless, Msgr. Foskolos points out, “in this meeting dogmatic and theological issues will not be addressed, but only questions of a social and moral nature. These include the situation of the Church in the process of European unification, bioethics, immigration and assistance to refugees, issues on which there is a convergence of views. The hope is that the two Churches may be able to collaborate further in future”. With reference to the domestic situation in Greece, which sees the Catholic Church but not it alone deprived of legal recognition, Msgr. Foskolos expressed the hope that “the six months’ Greek Presidency of the European Union might accelerate the solution of such problems, even if the current international situation is shifting attention to other issues and in particular to the Iraqi crisis, which we hope may be resolved peacefully, by averting an armed conflict”.
