An emerging profile

The great new challenges of the new millennium and the great suggestions of the two millennia of Christian history, meet and intersect in Benedict XVI’s journey to Turkey. The Pope is opening to the Orient: the Muslim Orient and the Orthodox Orient, the two great religious dimensions of a programme that will culminate in the Divine Liturgy in the patriarchal Church of St. George, on the solemn feast of St. Andrew. On meeting the diplomatic corps, the Pope did not fail to emphasise the geo-political importance of this pilgrimage of his, as also more widely of the dedication of the Holy Sea to peace and development: “The voice of the Church is always characterized by the will to serve the cause of man”. It is a demanding commitment which is also placed as the foundation of inter-religious dialogue and encounter, and more particularly of the dialogue with Islam. Benedict XVI’s address to the President of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs is exemplary in this sense: for its tone of great attention and sensibility, its trustful and positive character, and its affirmation, citing the words addressed by the great Pope Gregory VII to a Moslem prince, of the “special charity that Christians and Muslims mutually owe each other”. And charity, as one of the great evangelisers of present-day Turkey, St. Paul, reminds us, recalls freedom. So Benedict XVI did not fail to remind even the highest authorities of Islam of the postulate of freedom of religion, which presides over all the other liberties and is the sure foundation of dialogue. It is possible, therefore, for Christians and Muslims to work together, on the basis of a “special charity” to get to know each other, appreciate each other, and tackle in dialogue and in exchange the great problems, starting from the great question of religious freedom, which is causing so many sufferings today, and to Christians in particular. Se we come to the heart of the Pope’s visit to Turkey, his meeting with the small Catholic flock, with the recent memory of the last of its martyrs, Father Santoro, and finally with the meeting with the Orthodox world. The pledge to rediscovered unity is being solemnly renewed: a pledge that gains added enhancement in this land of the first great Fathers of the undivided Church, beginning with Gregory Nazianzen and John Chrysostom, whose relics were solemnly donated by John Paul II to Patriarch Bartholomew two years ago, in a touching ceremony. So the profile of this pontificate is emerging from Turkey. If John Paul II, rightly, was called “the Great” due to his great openings to other faiths, his extraordinary visions, his prophetic gestures, Benedict XVI has affirmed his character as “Father of the Church”. There is something in his gestures, in his spiritual make-up and in his teaching, that recalls, indeed, the great patristic legacy of the first millennium. So Benedict XVI is looking eastwards in his journey to Turkey, but at the same time he is speaking to the West, to the Church, and also to the men and women of Western Europe. A Christianity able to breathe with both lungs becomes almost naturally an ever-more complete defence for the Western identity and at the same time for the confrontation and dialogue between cultures, religions and civilization that will mark the near future: a task that demands maximum opening, and at the same time the most serene determination.