The visit that Pope Leo XIV will make to Türkiye and Lebanon is not just a spiritual pilgrimage. It is a political and ecumenical gesture that takes place at a moment full of symbolism: the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the founding milestone of most Christian churches. By meeting with Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, the pope follows in the footsteps of his predecessors in approaching the Orthodox world, which John Paul II described as the “other lung” of the Church. Together, the two Christian communities have around 1.7 billion believers, of which 300 million belong to Orthodoxy.
There are some doctrinal differences between Catholics and Orthodox, who have been separated since the distant year 1054. They go beyond the eternal issue of filioque and include disagreements over Marian dogmas, the conception of purgatory and liturgical practices such as the type of bread used in the Eucharist. But the central dispute continues to be papal primacy: Rome argues that the bishop of Rome is the universal leader of the Church, while the Orthodox support an autocephalous model, in which the Pope would only be the primus inter pares. It is an old quarrel, which in the 15th century led some Orthodox to prefer “the Turkish turban to the Latin miter”, but which in recent decades Rome and Constantinople have sought to soften.
This approach is positive not only for the two churches, but also for the world. The border between Catholics and Orthodox coincides, to a large extent, with the fault line between Europe and Russia. In Poland, Catholicism continues to be an important identity factor, while in Ukraine Greek Catholics – around ten million believers – represent the second largest religious community, especially in the west of the country. On the other hand, in Russia and Belarus, the Putin and Lukashenko regimes use Orthodoxy as an instrument of national and pan-Slavic unity. The Moscow Patriarchate, a close ally of the Kremlin, reflects many of Russia’s political positions, from foreign policy to social issues. For Putin, who calls for the fight against “Satanism” in Ukraine and recovers the tsarist idea of Moscow as the “Third Rome”, this instrumentalization of religion is convenient and effective.
Therefore, the meeting with Bartholomew I, although symbolic, will not be enough to resolve the differences between Catholics and Orthodox. The real test will be the dialogue with Cyril I, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia (a concept that includes Belarus). Relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church have been tense, but there have recently been signs of rapprochement: in July, Leo XIV received Metropolitan Antonij of Volokolamsk, number two in the Russian Orthodox Church, at the Vatican, in an attempt to resume dialogue interrupted by the war in Ukraine. It remains to be seen whether these ecumenical efforts can pave the way not only for Christian unity, but also for lasting peace in Europe.
Director of Diário de Notícias