Pope Francis’ most recent apostolic visitation to Cyprus and Greece is a particularly complicated one for a variety of political, socioeconomic and ecclesial reasons.
Most theologians are in agreement that the letters of Paul to cities in Greece like Thessalonica and Corinth are the oldest extant Christian texts, predating even the four Gospels. And it is clear that the first Christian communities in the ancient Mediterranean world spoke Koine Greek, not Latin. So the connection between Western Christianity and what John Paul II called the “twin lung” of the Church runs deep. Add to this the whole history of political democracy arising from Athens, the fact that ancient Rome adopted and incorporated Greek classicism as an integral element of their empire-building, and the inextricable ties between Christian thought and Hellenistic philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Philo, and one cannot but recognize the indispensability of the area to the cultural world that we today inhabit.
Tragically, internal and external divisions also mark the experience of Cypriots and Greeks over the course of history. The sack of Constantinople by Western Crusaders against their Byzantine co-believers (Christians attacking Christians) dramatically weakened the city before the eventual conquest by Seljuk and Ottoman Muslim forces. The acrimony and scars between the Catholic and Orthodox worlds from this and other theological debates like the Filioque controversy and papal primacy are still not fully healed, almost a millennium later. Beyond the ecclesial sibling rivalry, the island of Cyprus, which is related to our word for “copper” because of their metalworking used so often in Bronze era warfare, is still politically divided as well, as Turkey does not today recognize the Greek-dominated Republic of Cyprus. This has caused an intractable issue that plagues the modern European Union on a variety of fronts.
In one of his speeches on the trip concerning contemporary ecumenical realities, the pope exhorted Christians of differing branches of the Christian family tree not to let “small-t traditions” prevail in dividing us over the singular “Tradition, with a capital T” that unites us as believers. This particular formulation is most commonly associated with the French ecumenist Father Yves Congar, a Dominican theologian who was profoundly influential during the Second Vatican Council. Of course, not everyone agrees that the longstanding rift is so easily healed, as an Orthodox priest quite clearly heckled the pope from one of the many crowds surrounding the papal entourage, calling him a “heretic” in a widely publicized video.
Elsewhere on the trip, the pope lamented the “retreat from democracy” that is metastasizing around the planet and has drifted far from its roots in ancient Athens. The pope claimed that “in some societies, concerned for security and dulled by consumerism, weariness and malcontent can lead to a sort of skepticism about democracy.” The antidote to such a scenario in his mind is a greater commitment to “universal participation” in self-determining governance. He longs for a “change in direction” and desires that the modern world aid one another in passing “from partisanship to participation; from committing ourselves to supporting our party alone to engaging ourselves actively for the promotion of all.”
As he so frequently does, Pope Francis read many of the ills brought about by this “globalization of indifference” through the experiences of migrants who are too often viewed as a problem to be solved and not as human persons to be encountered. He said, “They are the protagonists of a horrendous modern Odyssey,” referring to the classic Homeric epic penned in ancient Greece.
The pope has said that he hopes to plan upcoming trips in 2022 to the Congo, along with Papua New Guinea and East Timor, one to the latter of which he had to cancel in 2020 due to the pandemic. On a related note, I received word this week from the Prefecture of the Papal Household that my graduate students and a few colleagues will be permitted to attend with me the Papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Feast of the Epiphany, barring any conflict with proposed future trips or cancellations due to public health concerns.
I will be sure to remember the People of God in the Camden Diocese in prayer at that event, as is my constant custom. Opa!
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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