Pope Francis' trip to majority-Muslim Turkey signals a continuing march toward interreligious dialogue and the path of reunification for the Catholic and Orthodox communions.
As both a head of state and the leader of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, the pope appears publicly for diplomatic and apostolic reasons. During this most recent trip to Istanbul and Ankara, Pope Francis' major spiritual purpose was to honor an invitation by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to celebrate St. Andrew, the patron saint and founder of the Orthodox churches.
During the festivities, both leaders spoke enthusiastically about expediting a process toward full communion between the two churches. They released a joint declaration addressing the suffering of all Christians in the Middle East. Pope Francis affirmed the value of face-to-face encounters in building understanding, and Patriarch Bartholomew praised the pope's ministry of invigorating hope in the church.
On history's timeline, such cordial joint meetings are a recent development. For 500 years, official relations between the Orthodox and Catholics, the Eastern and Western traditions, were nonexistent. In addition to diverging liturgies and spiritual philosophies, the issue of papal primacy loomed as a massive obstacle to unity between the two.
The first meeting to break the cold silence took place 50 years ago in 1964 when two predecessors of Francis and Bartholomew - Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras - met. Soon after, they presided together over a ceremony to symbolically erase painful excommunications and historical remembrances. It was a course-changer for Catholic-Orthodox relations and a powerful act of reconciliation.
Unlike Pope Francis' largely diplomatic trip to the European Union, his trip to Turkey this weekend was an "apostolic voyage" intended to continue building bridges with the Orthodox Church, in continuity with the actions of popes before him.
His progress has filtered down to national dialogues between Catholic and Orthodox leaders. In North America, that dialogue is alive and well, resulting in 30 "agreed statements" of common ground, amid a larger list of issues still dividing the churches.
The most persistent sticking point remains the role of the pope in the Church. In 2010, the North American dialogue creatively took up this question through a vision statement that sketched out what a reunited Catholic and Orthodox Church might look like and listed steps that could be taken, even now, to deepen communion.
During his trip last week, Pope Francis also offered prayers in Istanbul's Blue Mosque museum while standing next to the Grand Mufti, a senior Muslim cleric.
He placed this in context in his joint declaration with Bartholomew.
"Muslims and Christians are called to work together for the sake of justice, peace and respect," they said together, "especially in those regions where they once lived for centuries in peaceful coexistence and now tragically suffer together the horrors of war."
Kathryn Elliott covers the Vatican, Pope Francis and all things related to the Catholic Church for HNGN. She is a producer for EWTN News Nightly, an international cable news show airing weeknights at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST on the Global Catholic Television Network. Kathryn has reported for the National Catholic Register, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Catholic Spirit, The Minnesota Daily and The Word Among Us Magazine. She has a BA in professional journalism from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Kathryn lives in Washington D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @kmelliott90.
