05286
May 31, 2005

Pope repeats vow to seek Christian unity 

Vatican official proposes Catholic-Orthodox synod of bishops

by Luigi Sandri
Ecumenical News International 

ROME — Pope Benedict XVI used a Sunday visit to a city with historic ties to Orthodox Christianity to reaffirm a “fundamental commitment” to promoting church unity. 

     “Showing good sentiments is not enough,” the pope said during a meeting of the Italian National Eucharistic Congress in the southern Italian city of Bari. “Concrete acts that enter souls and move consciences are needed.”

     Bari, about 200 miles southeast of Rome on the Adriatic Sea, is a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians, who venerate the relics of 4th‑century Saint Nicholas of Myra, which have been kept there since 1087. 

     “Precisely here, in Bari, the city that keeps the bones of St. Nicholas, land of meeting and dialogue with our Christian brothers of the East, I would like to confirm my wish to assume as a fundamental commitment to work with all my energies in the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all the followers of Christ,” said Benedict, who was making his first official trip outside Rome. 

     Vatican and Orthodox church officials have expressed cautious optimism about improving relations, which have been strained in part over accusations that the Catholic Church has been “proselytizing” in traditionally Orthodox areas.  

     Earlier in the congress, the Vatican’s top official for church unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, proposed a joint synod, or official meeting, of Roman Catholic and Orthodox bishops. He noted that a meeting of Latin and Greek bishops took place in Bari in 1098, about 50 years after the two branches of Christianity pronounced each other “anathema.”

     “Why not hope that here, in Bari, 1,000 years after the synod of 1098 — in 2098, and why not before — we might again celebrate a synod of Greek and Latin bishops, a synod of reconciliation?” asked Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “The new pontificate has given us the hope that such expectations are not simply utopian.” 

     In his May 25 speech, Kasper also said, “It is not our intention, it is not our strategy, and it is not our policy to engage in so‑called proselytism.” But he also urged Orthodox churches to end a practice whereby in some cases Catholics who convert to Orthodoxy are re‑baptized.  

     Kasper said a joint meeting of Catholic and Orthodox bishops could help settle contentious issues concerning the role of the Roman pontiff and the Eucharist, the sacrament that commemorates Jesus’ last supper.

     In his speech, Benedict invoked the Eucharist as a reason for seeking unity.