Friday, December 01, 2006

Pope Benedict's tour of Turkey looks like an "across-the-board success"

Yahoo! News India

Pope on final day of fence-mending visit to Turkey
Friday December 1, 10:45 AM


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By Tom Heneghan

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pope Benedict's tour of Turkey winds up on Friday looking like an across-the-board success for his effort to repair battered relations with Turkey's Muslims.

Benedict infuriated many Muslims in September with a speech implying Islam was a violent faith, but won Turkish praise when he arrived on Tuesday by backing Ankara's bid to join the European Union and praising Islam as peaceful.

On Thursday he made his first visit to a mosque, among the conciliatory gestures that won high praise from Istanbul's Grand Mufti Mustafa Cagrici.

"Your two-day visit to Istanbul has produced an incredibly positive outcome for Turkey. We thank you," he told the German-born pontiff after guiding him around the famous Blue Mosque, only the second mosque ever entered by any pope.

Benedict's predecessor John Paul became the first pope to visit a mosque in Damascus in 2001.

"The pope's visit and the messages he gave are creating great synergies for the dialogues between the two religions. We are very happy for the visit," Cagrici said afterwards.

The warm words echoed satisfied comments from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who welcomed Benedict at Ankara airport on Tuesday and heard him clarify his views on Turkey's EU bid -- which he had once opposed -- and on Islam.

Perhaps thanks to very heavy security, only scattered protests broke out during the visit, which organisers had feared might attract big demonstrations by nationalists and Islamists.

HONOURING "GOOD POPE JOHN"

Benedict, 79, will start the day by celebrating mass at Istanbul's Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, which will be attended by the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who issued a joint declaration with him on Thursday restating their desire to overcome the 1054 Great Schism between their two churches.
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