Religion: Toward the Tomorrow of God

A Pope and a Patriarch embrace ecumenism and each other

It was the Feast of St. Andrew, a patron saint of Eastern Orthodoxy, and a visitor had come to a dingy cathedral in a slum quarter of Istanbul, the last refuge of Orthodoxy's symbolic center, the once mighty Patriarchate of the Byzantine Empire. There last week, sitting opposite the crowned and richly vested Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I, Pope John Paul II became the first Pontiff in nine centuries to join in an Orthodox Eucharistic service. Though the Pope did not partake of Communion, he quietly hummed along with the chants and...