Pope, visiting Turkey, urges religious freedom

“All feel the same responsibility in this difficult moment in history, let’s work together,” Benedict said during his flight from Rome to Ankara, where more than 3,000 police and sharpshooters joined a security effort that surpassed even the visit of President Bush two years ago.

“We know that the scope of this trip is dialogue and brotherhood and the commitment for understanding between cultures ... and for reconciliation,” he said.

Erdogan hails visit
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — in a last-minute change of plans — welcomed the pope at the foot of the plane and described the visit as “very meaningful.” Erdogan’s political party has Islamic roots, though the government is secular.

NBC VIDEO Tight security Nov. 28: Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Turkey, where he will seek to ease anger over his perceived criticism of Islam and mend a split with the world's Orthodox Christians. NBC's Keith Miller reports. Today show

In his first official act, Benedict visited the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, and wrote a message in a guest book calling Turkey “a meeting point of different religions and cultures and a bridge between Asia and Europe.”

Police monitored the highway leading to Ankara from the airport, where Turkish and Vatican flags waved in a light breeze. Snipers climbed atop buildings and hilltops. In wooded areas along the route, soldiers in camouflage fatigues set up observation points and sniffer dogs passed along bridges.

First visit to Muslim country
It was his first visit to a Muslim country as pontiff. The original goal of the pope’s trip to Turkey was to meet Bartholomew I, leader of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. The two major branches of Christianity represented by Bartholomew and Benedict split in 1054 over differences in opinion on the power of the papacy, and the two spiritual heads will meet in an attempt to breach the divide and reunite the churches.

Benedict leaves Ankara on Wednesday for Ephesus, where the Virgin Mary is thought to have spent her last years, and will then travel to Istanbul.

A closely watched moment of the trip will come Thursday during Benedict’s visit to Haghia Sophia, a 1,500-year-old site that was originally a Byzantine church and then turned into a mosque after the Muslim conquest of Istanbul — then known as Constantinople — in 1453. It is now a museum, and Turks would take offense at any religious gestures by the pontiff, who also plans to visit the nearby Blue Mosque.

In 1967, Pope Paul VI fell to his knees in prayer, touching off protests by Turks claiming he violated the secular nature of the domed complex. In 1979, Pope John Paul II made no overt religious signs during his visit.

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