POPE VISITS TURKEY AMID CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM TENSIONS
My Record Journal
Nov 28 2014
By Nicole Winfield and Suzan Fraser Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — When a pope last visited Turkey — Benedict XVI in
2006 — Muslim-Catholic tensions were so high that the Vatican added
a stop at Istanbul’s famed Blue Mosque at the last minute in hopes
of showing Benedict’s respect for Islam.
Pope Francis travels to Turkey this weekend amid new Muslim-Christian
tensions and war next door, with Islamic State militants seizing
chunks of Iraq and Syria and sending 1.6 million refugees across the
border into Turkey.
Francis is expected to tread lightly during his three-day visit,
sensitive to the delicate diplomatic tensions at play between Turkey
and the international coalition fighting the Islamic State.
But Vatican officials say he will not shy from denouncing violence
in God’s name and voicing concern for Christians being targeted by
the extremists. Remarkably, though, Francis will not meet with any
groups of refugees as he has done on previous trips to the region,
a clear sign of the Vatican’s unwillingness to wade too deeply into
the conflict.
Here are five things to look for during Francis’ visit, which begins
Friday.
To pray or not to pray
When Pope Paul VI made the first-ever papal visit to Turkey in 1967,
he fell to his knees in prayer inside Haghia Sophia, the 1,500-year-old
site in Istanbul that was originally a Byzantine church and was turned
into a mosque after the Muslim conquest of Istanbul — then known as
Constantinople — in 1453. The Turks were not pleased.
They staged protests, claiming Paul had violated the secular nature
of the domed complex, which is now a museum.
Asked if Francis would pray when he visits the massive complex on
Saturday, the Vatican was noncommittal. “We’ll see what he does,”
spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. “If while there the pope
personally experiences a moment of spiritual meditation, we’ll have
to see.”
Some Islamic groups in Turkey want Haghia Sophia to be converted
back into a mosque, and they have prayed outside the complex on the
anniversary of the conquest of Istanbul to push their demand. The
government says it has no plans to change Haghia Sophia’s status.
And the blue mosque?
Benedict became only the second pope to step foot in a Muslim house
of worship when in November, 2006 he visited the 17th century Sultan
Ahmet Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey’s most important.
There, he took off his shoes, bowed his head and closed his eyes for
nearly a minute in prayer alongside an Islamic cleric in a dramatic
gesture of outreach to Muslims.
The mosque visit was added late to Benedict’s schedule in a bid
to soothe Muslim anger over his now-infamous speech in Regensburg,
Germany linking violence to the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
Asked if Francis would pray in the mosque as Benedict did, Lombardi
took pains to stress the difference between a formal, ritualistic
prayer that a Catholic might recite in church and a respectful
“spiritual meditation” in a place of worship of another faith.
Turkey’s ambassador to the Holy See, Mehmet Pacaci, said the tensions
that overshadowed Benedict’s visit are “mostly a forgotten issue.”
Yet there are some fresh issues with Francis. In September, the head
of the government-run Religious Affairs Directorate and Turkey’s top
cleric called on Francis to take action to stem attacks on mosques
in Europe, saying that as many as 70 Muslim places of worship were
attacked in Germany this year, compared to 36 last year.
“This can’t happen through acts such as washing a young girl’s feet
or arranging inter-religious football matches and tournaments,” Mehmet
Gormez said, referring to two of Francis’ interfaith initiatives.
The two men meet on Friday in private.
Armenian ‘genocide?’
Francis also provoked Turkish anxiety when in June 2013 he told a
visiting delegation of Armenian Chrisitans that the massacre of
Armenians in Turkey last century was “the first genocide of the
20th century.”
The former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was particularly close to
the Armenian community of Buenos Aires, such that his successor as
archbishop recently announced that Francis would celebrate a Mass on
April 12, 2015 in St. Peter’s Basilica to commemorate the centenary
of the start of the massacre.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed
by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Several European
countries recognize the massacres as such.
Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying
the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of
civil war and unrest.
Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the pope’s genocide remarks
were “in no way a formal or public declaration” and therefore didn’t
constitute a public assertion that genocide took place.
Palace dispute
Francis will be walking straight into another controversy when he
visits Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s huge new palace on
once-protected farm land and forest in Ankara, becoming the first
foreign dignitary to be hosted at the lavish, 1,000-room complex.
The palace, which dwarfs the White House and other European government
palaces, was built at a cost of $620 million. It has drawn the ire
of opposition parties, environmentalists, human rights activists and
architects who say the construction is too extravagant, destroyed
important forest land and went ahead despite a court injunction
against it.
Erdogan brazenly dismissed the court ruling saying: “Let them knock
it down if they have the power.”
The Ankara branch of the Turkish Chamber of Architects sent a letter
to the pope this month, urging him not to attend the welcoming ceremony
on Friday at the “illegal” palace.
Lombardi brushed off the request, saying Francis was invited to visit
by the Turkish government and will go where the Turkish government
wishes to receive him.
Catholic-Orthodox
Technically speaking, the real reason for the visit is for Francis
to visit the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians,
Patriarch Bartholomew I.
The two major branches of Christianity represented by Bartholomew and
Francis split in 1054 over differences in opinion on the power of the
papacy, and the two spiritual heads will participate in an ecumenical
liturgy and sign a joint declaration in the ongoing attempt to bridge
the divide and reunite the churches.
Ties are already warm: Bartholomew became the first ecumenical
patriarch to attend a papal installation since the schism when
Francis took over as pope in March 2013. The two have met since on
several occasions, including during a visit in Jerusalem in May to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of the landmark encounter there of
Pope Paul VI and Bartholomew’s predecessor, Patriarch Athenagoras.
Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.myrecordjournal.com/news/national/6283333-129/pope-visits-turkey-amid-christian-muslim-tensions.html