As the Pope Prepares to visit his brother Patriarch

The Holy Father will be visting Turkey later this month. The Holy See has published the agenda for the Holy Father's Apostolic Visit to Turkey. As expected, he is not visting Trabezon where Fr. Andrea Santoro was murdered earlier this year. I look forward to the celebration of the Divine Liturgy at the Patriarchal Church of St. George on 30 November, the Feast St. Andrew, with the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, presiding, at which the two Patriarchs will issue a joint declaration. To that end I offer a link to a very informative video on the Ecumenical Patriarch's website. In this video you can watch Bartholomew I retrieveing the relics of St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John Chrysostom from the Servant of God, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, in Rome in November 2004, on the Feast of St. Andrew, the Apostle, patron of Constantinople in a ceremony. The relics of these two Patriarchs of Constantinople were seized by Western Christians in the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204 CE. There is a wonderful web resource for St. John Chyrsostom. In the video, it is Walter Cardinal Kasper, one of my favorite theologians, author of The God of Jesus Christ and President of Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity who accompanies the Ecumenical Patriarch during the trip to Istanbul to return the relics.

On a much lighter note, We're tiny, we're toony, we're all a little looney