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November 28, 2006

In Turkey, Pope aims to improve relations with Islam, Orthodoxy 

by Luigi Sandri
Ecumenical News International

ROME — Improving relations with followers of Islam and with Christian Orthodoxy are two major challenges that Pope Benedict XVI will face on his four-day trip to Turkey,
beginning today (Nov. 28). 
 
     The day before his departure, the BBC reported: “Pope Benedict XVI travels to Turkey this week on what is arguably the most dangerous, delicate and contested visit outside Italy made by any pope in modern times.” 
 
     Turkey is a secular nation of 72 million of whom 99 per cent are Muslims. 
 
     The Catholic News Service (CNS) reported that in a last-minute schedule change, the Vatican said Benedict would stop briefly on Nov. 30 at Istanbul’s Blue Mosque as a sign of respect toward Muslims. In doing he would become the second pope to enter a Muslim place of worship after his predecessor Pope John Paul II visited a mosque in Syria in 2001.  
 
     Some 20,000 protesters rallied against the Pope’s trip in a demonstration said to have been organized by the Islamic Saadet (Felicity) party as Turkey was preparing for the pontiff’s visit.
 
     CNS reported that ultranationalist newspapers in Turkey have depicted the papal visit as an attempt to form a “strategic partnership” between the Vatican and the Ecumenical Patriarchate, as part of a Christian [Catholic-Orthodox] alliance against Islam.  
 
     Archbishop Piero Marini, master of liturgical celebrations for the Vatican said in a statement: “It was not by chance that most of the writings that make up the New Testament originated in this land [Turkey] or were addressed to its Christian communities. Two of those biblical authors, Paul of Tarsus and Luke of Antioch, are among the first witnesses to a Church that in the course of the centuries saw a rich flowering of outstanding figures who left their mark on the whole of Christianity.” 
 
     On the eve of Benedict’s departure, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had looked set to snub the 79 year-old pontiff on his first official trip to a Muslim country, agreed to meet Benedict on his arrival at Ankara airport. Erdogan had earlier said he would have to travel to a NATO summit in Riga, Latvia and therefore would be unable to meet the Pope. 
 
     At a Sept. 12 lecture at Regensburg University in Germany, the pope outraged many Muslims throughout the world in referring to a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, who had lived in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and asserted that the Prophet Mohammed “brought only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” 
 
     Since then, Benedict has made a number of apologies, saying he never intended to offend the Prophet and did not identify with the emperor’s words. He has also reiterated his sincere respect for the Muslim faith, but many Islamic followers have not accepted his contrition.