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On Sunday, May 6, in Damascus, Pope John Paul became the first pontiff to enter a mosque when he visited the Umayyad Mosque in the company of Mufti Ahmed Kuftaro of Syria. The Pope urged forgiveness between Christians and Muslims, but, out of deference to Muslim sensitivities, no formal prayer was said.

On Friday, May 4, John Paul made the first visit to Greece by a pope in 1291 years. In recent weeks, plans for his visit had been strongly criticized by Greek Orthodox clergy and laity, but in Athens Pope John Paul defused at least some of the hostility by asking God to forgive Roman Catholics for sins committed against Orthodox Christians over the past 1,000 years.

Pope John Paul, who will celebrate his 81st birthday on May 18, is following in the "steps of St Paul" as he visits Athens, Damascus and Malta on his six-day pilgrimage. He returns to Rome today.

The Pope was invited to visit Greece by the country's president, Costis Stephanopoulos, and not by the Church of Greece, to which most of the country's 10.6 million citizens belong. When John Paul arrived at Athens airport on May 4 he was welcomed by government officials, and by bishops from Greece's Catholic minority—but no Orthodox bishop was there to greet him.

The Roman Catholic leader, accompanied by four cardinals, went immediately to the presidential residence in Athens and then made a "courtesy visit" to 61-year-old Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece, head of the Church of Greece. Several leading metropolitans of the Greek church were present.

After a private meeting of 30 minutes, Pope John Paul and Archbishop Christodoulos spoke publicly. Speaking Greek, the Greek archbishop said the Pope's visit "brings us joy. Our joy is, however, overshadowed by the fact of our division."

Archbishop Christodoulos then referred to religious differences between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, some of which date back more than 1,000 years. He mentioned in particular the crusaders' sacking of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, in 1204, and a more recent source of tension between Greece and the Catholic Church, the Vatican's failure to condemn the partition of Cyprus, following the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The archbishop also mentioned problems regarding Eastern Catholic churches—which celebrate Orthodox liturgy but are linked to Rome, and are viewed by many Orthodox as a Vatican ploy to entice Orthodox Christians into the Roman flock. The Vatican used to view the Eastern Catholic churches as a possible means to unite western and eastern Christianity, but in recent years, in face of the Orthodox hostility towards the policy, this view has been dropped.

Pope John Paul replied: "For the occasions past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness. … I am thinking of the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople, which was for so long a bastion of Christianity in the East."

The Pope said nothing about Cyprus, but indirectly referred to the Eastern Catholic issue, stating simply that "certain models of reunion of the past no longer correspond to the impulse towards unity which the Holy Spirit has awakened in Christians everywhere in recent times."

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May (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45