Pope Benedict meets with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
Today, I dare to hope we will see reunion in my lifetime.
Although it has all of Byzantium’s history behind it, the Church of Constantinople is tiny today, shrinking under the pressure of Turkish civil law. They cannot freely choose their leaders; their seminary is closed; they cannot own their church buildings; recently the Christians even lost the cemeteries that house their dead. They fear justly that they will die out entirely within a generation or two. Which makes all the more urgent our efforts and prayers to join together again.
Constantinople holds a kind of primacy among the Orthodox churches. If Constantinople and Rome can rejoin… perhaps full union is possible.
See patiarchate.org for much, much more.
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