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 made the sign of the cross Eastern style, right to left.

Words matched gestures. Dimitrios announced the establishment of a joint commission of theologians that will work to resolve differences. The first meeting is expected next spring. In a joint statement, the two leaders said the goal of the talks is nothing less than "re-establishment of full communion" between the world's 700 million Roman Catholics and more than a dozen self-governing branches of Eastern Orthodoxy that together include an estimated 125 million believers. A new spirit of warmth had begun when Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I met in Jerusalem at the Mount of Olives in 1964. Now under their successors, Dimitrios, 65, and John Paul, 59, a second and more difficult phase is beginning.

John Paul's quiet reception among the Islamic populace contrasted with his tumultuous tours in Mexico, Poland, Ireland and the U.S. Security was tight during his three days in Turkey. A courtesy call on Premier Süleyman Demirel in Ankara stirred virulent press attacks on the papacy. The Pope mildly urged Turkey's oppressed Christian minority to esteem Islam for its shared moral and religious values. Dimitrios, in a pointed reference to events in Iran, deplored the "tragedy" of rising "religious fanaticism" and the "self-destruction of men and their faith, always in the name of God." In Istanbul, John Paul made brief tourist stops at Topkapi Palace and the ancient basilica of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which became a mosque after the Turks conquered the city in 1453, and is now a museum.

The Great Schism between these two branches of Christianity is traditionally dated from mutual excommunications hurled in 1054 by Rome and Constantinople (as Istanbul was called until 1930). In 1204 Crusaders sacked Constantinople and temporarily installed a Latin-rite Patriarch. Today there are still differences about such matters as divorce (the Orthodox permit it on grounds of adultery and allow no more than three marriages in a lifetime), and especially the Nicene Creed. The Orthodox insist on the original wording of the creed, in which the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father." Catholicism adds that the Spirit proceeds from "the Father and the Son."