Submitted by Stamatis, Nov 28, 2006 15:50

What I am surprised to find missing from the coverage of the Pope's visit is this: both the turkish government and a vocal segment of the turkish people refuse to recognize the universal role of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the highest see of the Orthodox Christian Church for 17 centuries. To them, it is not Ecumenical, it is Greek. It is no surprise then that they have a problem with the Pope making an official visit to His Orthodox counterpart, the Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome Bartholomew. The Pope's visit has been postponed once because the turkish government didnt like the fact that he wanted to visit the Patriarchate and not Turkey, and that happened, if my memory serves me right, before the Regensburg "controversy", so let us not use this as an excuse. Turkey needs to change a few of its obsolete and counterproductive political habits and the innapropriate treatment of the spiritual leader to the 300 million Orthodox Christians world-wide is one of them.

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