The last day of Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic visit in Turkey began with a flight of three doves freed into the air, a symbol of peace, at the entrance of the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Istanbul.
“The fine image that Saint Paul uses to speak of the Church, the one of the building in which the stones are placed close together into one single building, and in which the corner stone, on which everything rests, is Christ”, said Benedict XVI this morning.
The mass was participated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, and the Armenian Patriarch, Mesrob II.
In the homily, the Pope remembered the words pronounced by his predecessor, John Paul II, in occasion of his visit to Turkey in November 1979: “The dawn of the new millennium might ‘rise on a Church that has found its full unity again, to be a better witness, amidst the embittered tensions of the world, of the transcending love of God, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ”.
Twenty-seven years later, Benedict XVI stressed, “this wish has not been granted yet, but the Pope’s wish is still the same and drives us, all of us, the disciples of Christ who move on with our delays and our poverties on the path that leads to unity, to work ceaselessly with a view to everybody’s good, by placing the ecumenical perspective at the top of our ecclesial worries”.
The celebration was held in line with the different Eastern rites, the Armenian, the Chaldean, the Syrian, adopting Latin, Turkish, French, German, Syriac, Arab and Spanish.
Pope Benedict XVI underlined, “in a world in which men have so much trouble sharing the gifts of the earth and in which they are rightly beginning to worry about the scarcity of water, such a precious gift for the life of the body, the Church finds out it is full of an even greater gift”, which consists –concluded the Pontiff – in the “task of announcing the Gospel as far as the boundaries of the earth, that is, telling to the men and women of this time the good news that not only enlightens but changes their lives, so much that is passes and defeats death itself”.
The Pope thanked the Turkish authorities for their “kind hospitality, in particular all those who allowed this visit to take place” and the population “for their very warm hospitality, also because my presence in these days created many difficulties in the daily life of the people and cities”.
The Pope is expected to land at Rome’s Ciampino Airport at 2:45p.m.
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