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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...
...never been known for his flexibility. As a university theologian and the Vatican's top doctrinal watchdog, the German prelate consistently stuck to his intellectual guns, sometimes stepping on sensibilities in the process. That unbendable belief in his own truth may have indeed gotten the now Pope Benedict XVI into trouble with his provocative September speech about faith and violence that sparked anger throughout the Muslim world. But the papacy often requires old men to learn new tricks. And so on Tuesday, as he set off on the most delicate mission of his life, the 79-year-old Pontiff...
When Pope Benedict XVI travels to Turkey this week, most of the world's attention will be focused on the Christian-Muslim religious divide. But the pontiff is also crossing a political fault line: The gulf between Europe and the Near East has been much in the news lately because of Turkey's troubled attempts to join the European Union. Ankara is keen to become a full member, but Europeans are having second thoughts. Skeptics, including the Pope himself, are openly questioning whether a mostly Muslim nation of 70 million can ever really be part of Europe...
...make pilgrimages. Pope John Paul II turned these spiritual journeys into worldwide media events, from his first return to his Polish homeland to the masses he conducted before millions in the Philippines and his Millennial-year arrival in the Holy Land. Though lacking some of the same flair, Benedict XVI's first four outings beyond Italian soil have largely followed similar pilgrimesque itineraries: warming up to a million young Catholics at World Youth Day in Cologne, paying homage to his predecessor in Poland, trying to turn back a wave of Spanish secularism in Valencia, and returning two months...