John Paul II and Eastern Orthodoxy

From the outset of his pontificate, the pope’s agenda was clear: reunite East and West, so that the Church might breathe again with both its lungs. With his first encyclical, The Redeemer of Man, and in every papal visit, John Paul demonstrated his keen desire for Christian unity, but it was with his visit to Dimitrios I, Patriarch of Constantinople, in Turkey in 1979 that "John Paul II gave Roman Catholic ecumenism a decisive orientation eastward" (George Weigel, Witness to Hope, p. 359).

Dimitrios returned the visit in 1987, an event of supreme historical importance, as both leaders prayed liturgically together and blessed the entire Church together. However, by the time of the Eurosynod that John Paul II convened in 1991, relations between East and West had begun to deteriorate, due in no small part to religious misunderstandings both among the Orthodox Churches and between Orthodox and Roman Catholics as well as to complications after the fall of Communism in 1989. The expansion and re-organization of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which the Orthodox often saw as a prelude to proselytism, and the bitterness many Catholics felt because of Orthodox alliances with pre-1989 Marxist governments, continues even now to chill ecumenical relations.

Together with his mea culpas, the moments in which John Paul has asked forgiveness for the Church because of the sins of her children, two documents, Light of the East (Orientale lumen) and Ut Unum Sint, the first enclyclical ever on ecumenism, represent the boldest papal initiatives to unify the Church for the sake of the world.

Not without reason does John Paul II continue to urgently call for personal and ecclesial conversion a movement of mind, heart and life toward God, putting God ahead of all personal or communal agenda. He uses the word kenosis, reminiscent of Christ’s self-emptying, to confer meaning on what appears to be on-going ecumenical failure, but which the pope tenaciously believes will lead to new life for the Church of the East and the West.