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Heavenly
Father, in this place, which saw the conversion of the Apostle Paul, we
pray for all who believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Guide their
steps in truth and love. May they be one as you are one, with the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
May they bear witness to the peace, which surpasses all
understanding, and to the light which triumphs over the darkness of
hostility, sin and death.
HH
Pope John-Paul II at Quneitra, Syria
Pilgrim's
Progress …
His
Holiness Pope John-Paul II concluded this week his ninety-third trip to
Greece, Syria and Malta. This 81-year old Pilgrim Pope, as he has come
to be known the world over, managed to defy his failing health as well
as the political odds of this challenging trip in order to tread in the
footsteps of St Paul. In Syria, the apostle Paul had been converted to
the Christian faith in a moment of blinding revelation on the road to
Damascus. In Greece, he had introduced Christianity to the Athenians on
top of the Areopagus Hill - next to the Acropolis. This was the scene
for one of his most stirring speeches in AD 51 as recorded in the Acts
of the Apostles. In Malta, he had been shipwrecked in AD 60 before being
shunted back to Rome for execution. The Italian daily newspaper La
Stampa wrote in its editorial last week that this journey was more
of a Calvary than a pilgrimage for the 262nd Bishop of Rome,
and compared his ordeal to the sufferings of Christ.
But
how can one briefly assess the merits and demerits of this latest
pilgrimage? What were the pitfalls in the stations that marked the
latest journey of his pontificate to date?
And where does Christianity stand now?
In
Greece …
It
had been quite obvious for some time now that the first station in
Greece was going to most difficult from an intra-Christian perspective.
In a country where Greek Catholics number no more than 200,000 or 5% of
the overall population, the Greek Orthodox hierarchy had vociferously
opposed this visit. In fact, so strong was its resistance that it evoked
an atypical outburst from the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch in
Constantinople, who lambasted those clerics displaying unseemly
provincialism in opposing the papal pilgrimage. Critical voices were
similarly heard from HE Theoklitos, Metropolitan of Salonika, and the
renowned theologian Aristidis Panotis who criticised the Orthodox
tendency to demonise Catholicism.
Religious
Tensions …
But
why were there so many tensions?
Why was there so much resistance by Metropolitan Christodoulos,
Greek Orthodox Primate of Greece, to this visit?
Why did a sizeable number of the Greek Orthodox clergy oppose
this first pilgrimage to the cradle of Hellenism being undertaken by the
successor to St Peter?
The
soreness between the 'two lungs' of the Christian Church - western and
eastern, Latin and Byzantine, catholic and orthodox - traces its
inveterate roots back to almost one thousand years.
This is the date of the Great Schism of 1054 when eastern and
western Christianity split, and when the predecessors of the two
churches maligned each other's segments of Christendom.
However,
a more immediate quarrel is only 800 years old and concerns one of the
most ill-starred episodes of Christian history. It relates to the
sacking of Constantinople by the rapacious Venetians during the Fourth
Crusade in 1204. This Crusade began, like the earlier three, with a call
from Pope Innocent III.
He drummed up support from French nobles and made a fateful
contact with the Venetians to provide transport. The crusader army that
arrived in Venice in 1202 was far smaller than anticipated and could not
pay for its ships. The Venetians agreed to provide transport so long as
the crusaders helped them to fight the Hungarians - despite a veto by
Pope Innocent III - and to divert later to Constantinople in order to
gain the throne for Alexius, whose brother-in-law Philip of Swabia was a
leading crusader.
Constantinople
fell in 1203 and Alexius was installed as Byzantine emperor. The Greeks
promptly assassinated him. The Venetians and the crusaders, making no
effort to continue to the Holy Land, took over the government. On 13
April 1204, the rank and file went on a three-day orgy of massacre and
pillage.
Thousands were killed. The Pope was aghast. His dreams of
reuniting the eastern and western churches were shattered. However, the
crusaders showed no interest in leaving and put their own monarch,
Baldwin of Flanders, on the throne and appointed a Venetian patriarch.
This puppet Latin state lasted only until 1261, but laid nonetheless the
seeds of lasting antagonism. The resentment has burnt for centuries, and
is best captured in a famous painting by Eugene Delacroix, which depicts
this episode in all its visual starkness.
In
fact, the Greek Orthodox hierarchy does not only blame the Catholic
Church for those tragic events.
It still recalls the 'Councils of Union' of Lyons in 1274 and of
Ferrare and Florence in 1438 when any military assistance by the West to
a Constantinople besieged by Muslim forces was made conditional upon a
submission of orthodoxy to the Roman pope. Indeed, all attempts to
're-conquer' orthodoxy by orders such as the Jesuits, as well as by the
Catholic monarchs of the time - Austro-Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian -
have left their indelible traces on the historical sub-conscious of the
Orthodox Church.
In fact, some segments of the Greek Orthodox Church also blame
the West for not moving against the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974.
However,
if those issues are deemed today as being 'historical' or
'pseudo-historical', other more contemporary - and ostensibly more
irascible - concerns play on the psyche of the Greek Orthodox Church
today.
Ever
since the collapse of communism in the former USSR and Eastern Europe,
the Catholic churches have re-constituted themselves in many of those
countries. They have re-appropriated many of their properties and have
begun to witness actively to their faith in those countries. The
presence of those 'uniate' churches - which observe the orthodox rites
but remain faithful to Rome - in Orthodox countries such as Russia, the
Ukraine, Georgia, Greece and many others has opened up the Catholic
church to accusations of proselytism. The fact that the Pope has often
supported those churches has equally exacerbated the suspicions of the
Orthodox hierarchy - chief amongst them HB Patriarch Alexis II - that
this 'uniatism' aspires to convert the Orthodox faithful into
Catholicism. Add to those issues the question of papal infallibility -
which is strictly defined these days anyway - and perhaps even the
'primacy' of the Bishop of Rome, and one can begin to detect additional
contributory factors of dissection between those two supposedly sister
churches.
A
Forecast …
It
remains my belief that those tensions between the Orthodox and Catholic
churches have only been softened after the papal visit to Greece. It is
true that the pontiff voiced an act of contrition for all torts caused
by the Catholic hierarchy over the centuries. It is also true that both
sides signed a common - but stilted - declaration condemning, inter
alia, violence, proselytism and fanaticism in the name of religion.
The Pope might even have engendered a somewhat tepid re-appraisal in the
attitude of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy. Yet, I believe that a gulf
still exists - and remains yawningly wide. There were no public
common prayers! There was no traditional agape meal, a breaking
of bread together, perhaps to avoid a common prayer!
True, those are symbols but symbols are potent indicators too.
The attitude of the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece was unfortunate at
best and boorish at worst. It is true that there are many sources of
tension and friction between the two Churches. But surely, such an
anti-ecumenical posturing in the new millennium will have been an
embarrassment to the Body of Christ? My forecast remains dispiriting,
and the future alone will tell whether the seeds of a more convivial
future between those two lungs of the Church were indeed planted this
week.
In
Syria …
And
then, the Pope flew from Spata airport just outside Athens to Syria and
yet another first!
Unlike
Greece, the primary directive here was as much the enhancement of
intra-Christian relations as it was the call for a constructive dialogue
between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East. The Pope shares the
belief of many local Christian leaders for the crucial need to maintain
the Christian communities in the Middle Eastern region since their
presence guarantees the universal values of independence, pluralism,
confessional equilibrium and respect for the dignity of all humankind.
In
this respect, his visit to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus was a notable
achievement for inter-faith relations. This mosque was a church until
the Arab conquest in the 7th century. It contains the tomb of
St John the Baptist who is also revered by Muslims as the prophet Yahya.
Here, symbols of reciprocal acknowledgement were most visible again. The
image of the Grand Mufti and many ulemas (Muslim teachers)
welcoming a roman pontiff across the threshold into their holiest
sanctuary was a telling achievement.
However,
the papal visit to Syria - a country where Christians form 14% of the
17-million population and where Aramaic is still spoken in three
villages - was also festooned with ecumenical dimensions. The Pope
concelebrated Holy Mass at the Abassiyin stadium in Damascus and
concluded it with the Regina Coeli. He visited the Greek Orthodox
Cathedral of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, the Greek Catholic
Patriarchate - whose newly-elected Patriarch Gregorius III Lahham was
the organiser of the pilgrimage to Syria - as well as the Syrian
Orthodox Patriarchate for ecumenical encounters. He went to the Church
of St Paul at the Kissan gate in the old walls of Damascus, whence the
apostle Paul had escaped by being lowered in a basket. He also had an
encounter with the youth of Syria - one of the popular highlights of the
pontificate of Pope John-Paul II.
A
major cornerstone of his pilgrimage to Syria was a visit to the ruined
village of Quneitra in the Golan Heights.
This political gesture, which coincided with a visit to St
George's Greek Orthodox Church, was a reminder to the whole world that
the political realities of this region remain as volatile as they are
unresolved.
From there, the Pope launched a strong prayerful plea for peace
in the Holy Land and in the world.
Political
Tensions …
Nonetheless,
politics inevitably crept into the pilgrimage in Syria. Indeed, the
welcoming speech by President Bashar Assad was a none-too-subtle attack
on the Jews. In his speech, the President asserted that the Jews had
betrayed Jesus and tried to kill the prophet Mohammed. His inopportune
choice of words in front of a pilgrim of peace and a messenger of mutual
tolerance between the three monotheistic traditions led to much
discomfiture within some Vatican and Catholic circles. It also
contradicted the official line of the Vatican that had rejected the
charge of deicide against Jews at its Council of 1963. Whilst it was
understandable that the President, as much as some Christian and Muslim
religious leaders, wished to use the papal visit to bolster their
legitimate political grievances, such words dwarfed the Pope's message
of reconciliation.
There
were voices raised that the Pope had remained silent and unresponsive as
much to such political declarations as to the Syrian military presence
in Lebanon. But I believe that he maintained his time-honoured custom of
adhering to his own script and not deviating from his original thoughts.
Having said that, the Pope did affirm those principles of international
legality that proscribed the acquisition of territory by force, the
rights of all peoples for self-determination and compliance with the UN
resolutions and Geneva Conventions.
A
Forecast & Future Plans …
I
believe the papal pilgrimage to Syria affirmed the Christian indigenous
presence and witness against a haemorrhaging tide of emigration, as much
as it enhanced Christian-Muslim relations, in the whole region.
The
Pope then flew to Valetta, Malta, for the second time in eleven years
where the overwhelmingly Catholic population gave him a rapturous
welcome. He now plans to visit the Ukraine in June 2001, and then
Armenia in September 2001 to participate in the celebrations marking the
1700th anniversary of Armenia adopting Christianity as a
nation-state.
It seems that this Pilgrim Pope has little intention of slowing
down the pace ..!
Merciful
Father, may all believers find courage to forgive one another, so that
the wounds of the past may be healed, and not be a pretext for further
suffering in the present.
May this happen above all in the Holy Land, this land which you
have blessed with so many signs of your Providence, and where you have
revealed yourself as the God of Love.
HH
Pope John-Paul II at Quneitra, Syria
©
harry-bvH
@ 11 May 2001
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