Pope Benedict embarking on troubled trip

Stephen Weeke Producer • E-mail

NEW YORK - Pope Benedict XVI embarks on the most controversial trip of his young papacy this week by going to Turkey, an almost completely Muslim country, where he arrives with the baggage of his own past statements that still anger and offend many of its people.

With a great deal of tension in the air and concerns for his safety — as well as the fear of repercussions against Turkey's small Catholic population — both the wisdom and the timing of the visit have been questioned. 

But with Germanic determination Benedict is marching resolutely into a potential lion’s den, armed with stated good intentions and positive messages but also carrying the liability of his penchant for using blunt language, a trait that has gotten him into trouble in the past.

Deep roots
There are deep roots to many of the elements that have some observers concerned about the trip.

Much of early Christianity was played out on Turkish soil. The Virgin Mary is believed to have lived out the rest of her life there after her son’s death, accompanied by the apostle John. Saint Paul was based for many years in Turkey, from which he wrote his many letters urging people to convert to Christianity, a major part of the New Testament. And it was the Emperor Constantine who would legitimize Christianity in the 4^th century. Constantinople, to which he moved the seat of the Roman Empire, is the city we now call Istanbul.

For a thousand years, eastern Christianity (based in Constantinople) and western Christianity (based in Rome) were, in essence, one religion. However, cultural and power struggles would eventually separate the two ends into an official divorce, known as the Schism of 1054, resulting in the Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics of today. 

And that was the relatively peaceful part. Before and after the Schism, there were centuries of Muslim attacks later countered by the Christian crusades, ending in the permanent domination by Islam in the 15th century, resulting in the Muslim stronghold that it would remain to this day.

Finally, there was the decline of royal rulers and the arrival of strongman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who forged the modern nation of Turkey in 1922. Ataturk succeeded in part by creating a strictly secular government that imposed strict control over religion, a policy some observers believe eventually resulted in the revival of Islamic fundamentalism.

Because of all this, Benedict’s trip walks a historical minefield laced with the scar tissue of wounds that go back centuries, as well as an entire millennium.

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