Constantinople, Dec. 4, 2006 (CWNews.com and AsiaNews Service) - Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has disclosed that he made an important, concrete proposal for Orthodox-Catholic cooperation during his November 30 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.

Speaking to the Italian daily Avvenire after the conclusion of the Pope’s trip to Turkey, the Orthodox leader said that he could not disclose the nature of the suggestion he had made, but reported that the Pope seemed quite interested. He said that he is now “waiting for an official response.”

The AsiaNews service, citing sources in the Constantinople patriarchate, reports that the Patriarch suggested that he and the Pontiff should personally take part in the next meeting of a joint Orthodox-Catholic theological commission, to take place next year in Ravenna, Italy. 

The same sources indicate that the sensational proposal was made by Bartholomew I during the Pope’s visit to Istanbul. Card Walter Kasper, head of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, is said to have liked the idea and Benedict XVI approved it in principle, conditional on his future agenda. The Joint Commission began to meet again after six years. It was suspended because of the impossibility to find common ground on issues like the place of the Uniate Churches, i.e. Catholic Churches, especially in Ukraine and Romania, which reached full communion with Rome in the 16th century whilst at the same time preserving the Eastern rituals and liturgies. Suppressed under Stalinist rule, their property and congregations were “passed onto” the Orthodox Church. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, Uniate Churches rose again and began demanding restitution, sometime tactlessly, of their churches and other properties.

 In turn, this started a row that continues to this day over the alleged aggressiveness of Catholics now accused of proselytising among Orthodox. With the Joint Commission back on—first meeting in September in Belgrade (Serbia)—, Catholics and Orthodox have began looking at another key issue in ecumenical relations, namely the powers of the bishop of Rome, i.e. the Pope. During the three meetings between the Pope and the Patriarch in Istanbul a joint statement was signed that, whilst it added nothing new in terms of Catholic-Orthodox relations, it expressed “joy” over the renewed dialogue and reasserted the two parties shared commitment to the process. Bartholomew I and Benedict XVI also stressed separately their desire to pursue the ecumenical path. Bartholomew expressed “our common desire to pursue without wavering our path in the spirit of love and fidelity towards the truth of the Gospel in the shared tradition of the Holy Fathers to re-establish the full communion of our Churches.” Benedict XVI did likewise and confirmed his readiness to finding an acceptable way to exercise the Petrine primacy. 

The joint theological commission was established in November 1979 by Pope John Paul II and the Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I. Its work reached an impasse, however, at a July 2000 meeting in Baltimore, when Catholic and Orthodox participants could not agree on the question of "uniatism"-- the Orthodox term for the eastern Catholic churches. The commission suspends its work.

In June 2004, Pope John Paul II issued a call for the resumption of the theological dialogue, and the new Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I agreed. Upon his election in April 2005, Pope Benedict XVI added his strong endorsement. The group met in Belgrade, in September 2006, for talks co-chaired by Cardinal Walter Kaspe,r the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and the Orthodox Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon.