Hold firm to shared apostolic faith
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – To promote Christian unity, Catholics and Orthodox must hold firm to the faith handed down by the apostles and witness together to the Gospel as the good news humanity is seeking, Pope Benedict XVI told Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.
“By generously offering their lives in sacrifice for the Lord and for their brethren, the apostles proved the credibility of the good news that they proclaimed to the ends of the known world,” the pope said in a written message delivered Nov. 30 to the patriarch in Istanbul.
The pope’s message was carried to Patriarch Bartholomew by Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who led a Vatican delegation to a celebration of the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, the patriarchate’s patron saint.
St. Andrew, the first disciple, is celebrated as patron saint by the patriarchate and many other churches in both the East and Western world. To mark the occasion each year, the Vatican sends a delegation to celebrate with Patriarch Bartholomew at the headquarters of the Orthodox Church in Fanar, Istanbul, which the pope himself visited in 2006.
Archbishop George Niederauer and San Francisco Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Gerasimos were in Istanbul for the feast day, as part of a 12-day trip to Rome, Athens and Istanbul to foster ecumenical relations. The archbishop and the metropolitan and the ecumenical delegation they were leading attended the Divine Liturgy in honor of St. Andrew at St. George Cathedral. The trip was to include a visit with Patriarch Bartholomew and a stop at the Vatican for an audience with the pope.
The pope said marking an apostle’s feast day should be a “strong summons” to all Christians “to renew their fidelity to apostolic teaching,” a topic that has become increasingly important in ecumenical dialogue as disagreements increase over what are essential points of faith and what modern adaptations are permissible or even necessary.
In the modern world, the pope wrote, it is especially important for Christians to work more closely in sharing the Gospel and in presenting Christ “as the answer to the deepest questions and spiritual aspirations of the men and women of our day.”
While Cardinal Koch joined the ecumenical patriarch’s celebration in Istanbul, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, celebrated the feast with Catholics and Orthodox in the Orthodox cathedral of Astana, Kazakhstan.
Cardinal Bertone gave the homily and then presented Kazakhstan’s Christian leaders – Catholic Archbishop Tomasz Peta and Orthodox Metropolitan Alexander – with fragments of the relics of St. Andrew.
The cardinal said the church leaders had asked Pope Benedict for a part of the relics, which are housed in Amalfi, Italy, to “underline our common veneration of the apostles.”
Cardinal Bertone was in Kazakhstan to represent the Vatican at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Vatican Radio spoke to Dublin, Ireland, Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, before the Vatican delegation’s departure for Turkey, to learn more about the joint celebration and the common witness of the two churches in that majority Muslim nation.
The bishop said the East-West meeting “is the logical outcome” of efforts made in the 1970s and 1980s to express the communion that already exists between the two churches by celebrating the feast days of each other.
“We’ll be discussing how we will both institute the new ad hoc commission that will have to develop a new paper on the role of the Bishop of Rome in the first millennium,” the bishop added. “Also this year I would say the focal point of the visit will be a reflection on our shared or common witness … especially here in Europe.”
By Cindy Wooden
From December 3, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
