Word: xvi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Early last week, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had reason to be optimistic. During a meeting in Ankara, Pope Benedict XVI said he was in favor of Turkey joining the European Union. This reversed an opinion he had delivered previously as a Cardinal, saying the move would be "a grave error against history." But the good news was short-lived. Just days after the Pope's remarks, Olli Rehn, the E.U.'s Commissioner for Enlargement, recommended that the E.U. suspend a portion of Turkey's membership talks just 13 months after they began. The reason: Turkey's continued unwillingness...
Papal trips are often as much about what is not said and done as the words and gestures actually delivered by the Roman visitor and his local hosts. As Pope Benedict XVI's four-day trip to Turkey drew to a close Friday, here is an initial tally of what did and didn't happen on this most delicate visit...
Just over a month after his controversial speech at Regensburg University—on “Faith and Reason”—that enraged the Muslim world, Pope Benedict XVI landed in Ankara yesterday for an equally controversial trip to the largest Muslim “democracy” in the world, Turkey. Set amidst the threats against the Pope’s life and protests in Istanbul 20,000 strong, we must see this trip for what it is: a courageous act of faith that aims to rebuild both political and religious bridges with Islam...
...after the European Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and subsequent political secularization, we find a radically different Church these days. Once known as a dogmatic “rottweiler” while he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict XVI is a changed man. And for the better. He seems to have adopted the best aspects of John Paul II’s revolutionary ecumenism and unheralded political subtlety. The trip to Turkey is a prime example of such policies...
...Istanbul is where Pope Benedict XVI chose to make his first visit to the head of a church. He was driven, observers say, by a desire to further the healing process begun in 1964 between the churches of East and West, and, more controversially, to highlight concerns over Christian minorities in the Muslim world...