Turkey and the popes from Roncalli to Pope Francis

(Vatican Radio) On the eve of the Apostolic journey of Pope Francis to Turkey from November 28th to the 30th we shine the spotlight on the Popes from John XXIII to Pope Francis in terms of their relation to Turkey.  

We do this with Jesuit Professor Felix Kӧrner who lived in this nation at a cross-roads between east and west at length. Father Kӧrner's special expertise is in Islam and he's currently teaching ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue at the Pontifical Gregorian University here in Rome.

Listen to Jesuit Professor Felix Kӧrner in a conversation with Veronica Scarisbrick:

The first pope our Professor is asked to highlight is Saint John XXIII who served as Apostolic delegate to Turkey from 1933 to 1944, long before his election to the See of Peter. Father Kӧrner begins by speaking of the legacy of  Roncalli as papal representative to Turkey and highlights how the key word in his approach to the Turkish people was ‘respect’. A factor which earned him a legacy still very much alive today. So much so that the Turkish people of Istanbul have since named a street after him and refer to him to this day as “the Pope who loved the Turks”.

Asked to speak of the legacy to the Turks of the first pope to travel there, Blessed Paul VI, Father Kӧrner points to how he followed in the footsteps of his predecessor in terms of ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue. However, he says, Pope Paul took it one step further in terms of “realisation”. On the one hand because he realised the time was ripe to reach out to other faiths at a theological and doctrinal level. And the Vatican II Declaration on the Church’s Relation to Non-Christian Religions known as ‘Nostra Aetate’ of October 28, 1965 represents the outcome of this realisation. But also in more practical terms, Father Kӧrner remarks, he founded a Secretariat for non- Christians which then became the Pontifical Council for Inter- religious Dialogue.

In this conversation Father Kӧrner also speaks of Saint John Paul II whom he describes as a pope of "relations" and of Benedict XVI, now pope emeritus, who was the last pope to visit this nation in 2006, to whom he pins the word “reflection". 

So what about Pope Francis and Turkey? Well we'll certainly know more once his Apostolic journey has taken place but the word attached to him by our German Jesuit is " representation" for this Argentinian from the ends of the earth.