There’s another city that Benedict XVI would like to visit soon: Istanbul. The date he has in mind is November 30, the feast of St. Andrew, who is the patron of the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople. Patriarch Bartholomew I has already invited the pope. And he has already sent to Rome, on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the patrons of the Roman papacy, his most authoritative and trusted theologian, Ioannis Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon. Zizioulas and Ratzinger have respected each other and met with each other for decades. They have begun working on a resumption, in the fall, of the work of the commission for theological dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. They have compatible views on the main point of division between the two Churches, the primacy of the pope of Rome. The solution is to be sought in light of the axiom: “Where the Eucharist is, there is the Church.”
From Chiesa
