As Ankara prepares to receive Pope Francis on Nov. 28-30, Turkish media have noted with raised eyebrows that Turkish affairs do not appear to be uppermost on the pope’s mind. “It was conspicuous that the pope chose to speak of the ‘Ecumenical Patriarchate’ and ‘Constantinople’ rather than of Turkey,” when referring to the destination of his upcoming visit, the daily Milliyet pointed out huffily. It is a Turkish delusion of grandeur to believe that the spiritual leader of over a billion Catholics around the world should see, one and a half years into his papacy and before visiting most of those countries that have predominantly Catholic populations, a pressing need for talks in Ankara. His visit to the Turkish capital is little more than an obligatory courtesy call on the host country of his real destination, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The patriarchate has long been at the heart of a deep misunderstanding between Turkey and the West. While the Fener, as the patriarchate is locally known for its location on the Golden Horn, appears to many Turks as little more than a local bishopric for the handful of remaining Greeks in Istanbul, it retains enormous significance for 300 million Orthodox Christians around the world. In addition, its importance to Christianity has been growing again over the past 50 years, as successive patriarchs and popes since 1964 have been seeking a path to reunification of the world’s two largest churches, which split apart nearly a thousand years ago. Those efforts have recently intensified under the auspices of the present Patriarch Bartholomew and his counterparts in the Vatican, John Paul II, Benedict and now Francis.