Patriarch Bartholomew, Archbishop Justin Welby and ten other leaders of Orthodox and Protestant denominations are due to attend, along with several of the fraternal delegates to the synod.

Archbishop Welby said that it was "an opportunity for all of us to come together and inspire change".

The service, organised by the ecumenical Taizé community, follows celebrations for the cross-denominational Season of Creation and a series of workshops for young adults designed to promote Christian unity.

Read More

"We are entering a new era of cold war," Patriarch Bartholomew (pictured) of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople said in a Turkish-language broadcast interview.

"We do not know what will happen next. I hope this cold war period will last a short time. I hope World War 3 won't break out."

Patriarch Bartholomew praised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for "setting a very good example for his people" in resistance to the Russian invasion.

At the same time, he rebuked Putin for inflicting "a great injustice" on Ukraine.

"Ukraine was liberated 30 years ago, but they continue to be brothers. They continue to be coreligionists, yet Putin has declared a war against them," he said.

"Putin is a very intelligent and dynamic leader, so it is not easy to understand how he decided this. Putin did himself an injustice. He earned the hatred of the whole world."

That rebuke could prove to be a severe blow to Putin's ideology. Kremlin officials have used the traditional links between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian believers to secure Russian political influence in Ukraine.

"This is a tectonic move," former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, senior director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner.

"I find this potentially as impactful as the role [the] Vatican played toward the end of the Cold War.

"Although the ecumenical patriarch is different from the pope, the impact of his words on the Russian hegemonic project could be as destructive as the impact of Pope John Paul II's impact on the Soviet hegemonic project."

Putin regards Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine as "a single large nation, a triune nation". He has pressured Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko to bring Russia and Belarus into a formal "union-state."

Ukrainian officials believe that Putin wants to force Zelensky, or a future Ukrainian leader, to follow Lukashenko into the union-state.

Meanwhile, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has offered moral legitimacy to those ambitions. This was evident in the prayers for peace he offered in the days since the invasion began.

"God forbid that a terrible line stained with the blood of our brothers should be drawn between Russia and Ukraine," he said on February 27.

"May the Lord preserve the Russian land. When I say ‘Russian' ... the land which now includes Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and other tribes and peoples."

Patriarch Bartholomew, by contrast, expressed "solidarity ... spiritual, moral, [and] through prayer" with the defenders of Ukraine as he praised the Ukrainian government for refusing to cave in to Putin's demands.

"They do not want to surrender, and they are right," he said in the broadcast interview.

"Why should they surrender their freedom to the invader? Because right now, Ukraine is under Russian occupation. Will we say war or occupation? It's the same. A very bad situation, a foreign country, but a coreligionist and a neighbour at the same time."

Those rebukes could provide an effective antidote to Putin and Patriarch Kirill's justifications for the war, analysts suggest.

Sources

Washington Examiner

The New Yorker

The Conversation

Pope Francis, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church, made the joint statement ahead of the Cop26 climate summit.

In their first-ever joint statement, the three clerics urged people to play their part in 'choosing life' for the planet. They called on leaders to make decisions that will allow a transition to 'just and sustainable economies'.

The statement said: 'We call on everyone, whatever their belief or worldview, to endeavour to listen to the cry of the earth and of people who are poor, examining their behaviour and pledging meaningful sacrifices for the sake of the earth which God has given us.

"Today, we are paying the price, tomorrow could be worse. This is a critical moment. Our children's future and the future of our common home depend on it."

'This is the first time that the three of us feel compelled to address together the urgency of environmental sustainability, its impact on persistent poverty, and the importance of global cooperation,' it added.

The three Christian leaders used their platform to speak out against inequality, saying: "We stand before a harsh justice: biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and climate change are the inevitable consequences of our actions, since we have greedily consumed more of the earth's resources than the planet can endure.

"But we also face a profound injustice: the people bearing the most catastrophic consequences of these abuses are the poorest on the planet and have been the least responsible for causing them."

COP26, which the pope hopes to attend, is taking place in Glasgow from October 31 to November 12.

The talks aim to spur more ambitious commitments by countries to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. COP26 also seeks to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius during this century, in line with a 2015 Paris accord.

Sources

Daily Mail

The Telegraph

At present the fate of the building, that has been a museum since 1934, rests on an upcoming Turkish court ruling.

President Tayyip Erdogan proposed restoring the mosque status of the Hagia Sophia, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The sixth century building, which has served firstly the Christian Byzantine and then the Muslim Ottoman empires, is one of Turkey's most visited monuments today. It is known in Turkish as Ayasofya.

The court is set to rule on a challenge to the Hagia Sophia's current status. The legality of its conversion into a museum during the early years of the modern secular Turkish state founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is under the legal spotlight.

Bartholomew, who is is based in Istanbul, says converting Hagia Sophia into a mosque will disappoint millions of Christians around the world.

For 900 years the Hagia Sophia was the foremost church in Christendom. For the next 500 years after the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul, it became one of Islam's greatest mosques.

It is still a vital centre where East and West embrace, the Patriarce told a church congregation.

Changing its status will "fracture these two worlds" at a time when mankind needs unity more than ever because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he added.

However, groups have campaigned for years for the museums reconversion into a mosque. Erdogan, a pious Muslim, backed their call ahead of local elections last year.

Many Turks argue that mosque status would better reflect the identity of Turkey as an overwhelmingly Muslim country. Recent polls show most Turks support the proposal.

Representatives of the United States and neighbouring Greece say they are concerned about the bid to restore the mosque status of the building.

The U.S. religious freedom envoy, Ambassador Sam Brownback, says it holds enormous spiritual and cultural significance to billions of believers of different faiths around the world. He is calling on Ankara to retain its status.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu is not happy with what he sees as international interference.

"This is a matter of national sovereignty," he says.

"What is important is what the Turkish people want."

Source

• Reuters
• Image: Al Jazeera

The hackers, known as Fancy Bear, have targeted top aides to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians. Batholomew himself does not use email.

After months of research, the AP says it has evidence the hackers' information came from a hit list of 4,700 email addresses supplied last year by Dell subsidiary, Secureworks.

AP says targeting Bartholomew's aides shows the high stakes Kiev and Moscow place on Ukraine's religious future, as Bartholomew is currently deciding whether to accept a Ukrainian bid to remove the Ukranian church from its association with Russia.

He has the exclusive right to grant the Ukranian church "Tomos of Autocephaly" - full ecclesiastic independence.

The armed conflict between Ukrainian military forces and Russia-backed separatists is said to be behind Bartholomew's deliberations.

If he were to grant Ukranians the ecclesiastic independence they want, it would split the world's largest Eastern Orthodox denomination and erode the power and prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The Moscow Patriarchate has positioned itself as a leading player within the global Orthodox community.

Some observers say the issue could be decided as soon as next month.

"If something like this will take place on their doorstep, it would be a huge blow to the claims of Moscow's transnational role," says Vasilios Makrides, who is a specialist in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Erfurt in Germany.

"It's something I don't think they will accept."

Hilarion Alfeyev, the Moscow Patriarch's representative abroad, says granting the Tomos could lead to the biggest Christian schism since 1054, when Catholic and Orthodox believers parted ways.

"If such a thing happens, Orthodox unity will be buried," Alfeyev says.

The Russian Orthodox Church says it has no information about the hacking and declined to comment.

Source

• New York Post
• Religion News Service
• ABC
• Image: Greek Reporter

This is the view of the Vatican Correspondent for NCR after a momentous meeting between Pope Francis and the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

The pair met on the Feast of St Andrew, at the Church of St George at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

"I want to assure each one of you here that, to reach the desired goal of full unity, the Catholic church does not intend to impose any conditions except that of the shared profession of faith." Pope Francis said this in the speech he pronounced before Patriarch Bartholomew at the Phanar today.

Continuing, the Holy Father said: "The one thing that the Catholic church desires, and that I seek as Bishop of Rome, 'the church which presides in charity,' is communion with the Orthodox churches."

The Pontiff assured the Orthodox that the Catholic Church does not want submission nor subjection of one to the other.

Reunification irreversible

For his part, Bartholomew called the process for reunification of the two churches "irreversible."

Noting the process started 50 years ago in Jerusalem by Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, he said the two communities have no option but to join together.

"We no longer have the luxury of isolated action," said Bartholomew.

"The modern persecutors of Christians do not ask which church their victims belong to. The unity that concerns us is regrettably already occurring in certain regions of the world through the blood of martyrdom."

Picking up on a key phrase of Francis' papacy Bartholomew said the church "cannot be self-centered, revolving around itself."

"What is the benefit of boasting for what we have received unless these translate into life for humanity and our world both today and tomorrow?" he asked.

Bartholomew also took a personal tone with Francis, saying his brief papacy had "already manifested you in peoples' conscience today as a herald of love, peace and reconciliation."

"You preach with words, but above and beyond all with the simplicity, humility and love toward everyone that you exercise your high ministry," Bartholomew told Francis.

"You inspire trust in those who doubt, hope in those who despair, anticipation in those who expect a church that nurtures all people."

Overcoming obstacles together

Before leaving Turkey, Francis and Bartholomew signed a joint declaration reaffirming their desire to overcome the obstacles dividing their two Churches.

Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, acknowledged the Church leaders' approach.

While experts from both churches continue to debate theological divisions between them, Francis and Bartholomew are "pushing with incredible strength toward union" through their frequent and warm personal contacts, Lombardi said.

"The reason for the pope to come here is not to give a speech, but to pray", he said.

Earlier Pope Francis visited Sultan Ahmet mosque and prayed alongside the Grand Mufti of Istanbul, Rahmi Yaran.

"I prayed for Turkey, I prayed for the mufti, I prayed for myself because I need it, and I prayed above all for the peace and an end to war," the Pope told reporters in an interview in the plane on the way home.

Sources

• Vatican Radio
• NCR
• La Stampa
• CNS
• Crux
• @joshjmac
• Image: Pathos

By that standard, Francis showed that Catholicism on his watch is alive and kicking by delivering one of the greatest surprises of his papacy — a peace summit that's likely to have no immediate impact whatsoever on the Middle East peace process, but that yet still managed to feel like a historic turning point.

In truth, going in to Sunday's prayer with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres, neither the pope nor his advisers were expecting a miracle.

"Anybody who has even a minimum understanding of the situation would never think that as of Monday, peace will break out," said Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a Franciscan priest based in the Middle East who organised the event.

The pope's lone ambition, he said, was to "open a path" that was previously closed.

Yet even if nothing results on the Israeli/Palestinian front, there are three reasons why tonight's "invocation for peace" was much more than a photo-op.

First, it represents a revitalization of the Vatican's diplomatic capacity after a period in which it hit a nadir. Continue reading.

John L. Allen Jr is associate editor at the Globe, specialising in coverage of the Vatican and the Catholic Church. He also serves as senior Vatican analyst for CNN, and was for 16 years a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter.

Source: Boston Globe

Image: Patheos

"Biodiversity is the work of divine wisdom and was not granted to humanity for its unruly control," wrote Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the eve of a new Eastern Orthodox liturgical year, which begins on September 1.

Continue reading