PALM HARBOR - Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to make a historic visit to the headquarters of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Istanbul, the Orthodox patriarch announced Thursday.
The trip, which has not been scheduled, will be the first time a Roman Catholic pope has made such a visit since 1979. It could go a long way toward healing a schism that has existed for nearly 1,000 years.
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Read the complete article Patriarch: Pope to visit Istanbul from St. Petersburg Times Online.
Okay, there's nothing really new to this announcement, as we all knew Benedict XVI was planning on going. The following though is interesting to say the least:
The Eastern Orthodox Church has been headquartered in present-day Turkey since the fourth century A.D., when Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire east, to a city he named Constantinople. The city remained the single worldwide center of Christianity until the Catholic Church broke away in the Great Schism in 1054.
Rome broke away from Constantinople? That is an interesting way of putting it...
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