Catholic Church leaders in Cyprus and Greece have welcomed surprise plans for an early December visit by the Pope, as a chance to foster dialogue and improve links with the wider Catholic world. However, several Orthodox dignitaries have protested over the move, warning it would fuel scandal and division.
“The Pope’s visit to Greece will be above all a summons to faith, a call for openness to God and neighbour,” said Archbishop Theodoros Kontidis of Athens. “This country’s Catholics are made up of many different groups, Poles, Albanians, Filipinos and Africans, as well as native Greeks. They need the visit to strengthen their own unity and their links with the universal Church, and there will be a good atmosphere for it.”
The five-day pilgrimage, confirmed by Rome last weekend, will be the first by Francis since his April 2016 visit to Middle East refugees on Lesbos, and the first by a Pope to Cyprus since a stopover by Benedict XVI in June 2010. Pope John Paul II also paid a historic visit to Athens in May 2001, the first by a Roman pontiff since the thirteenth century.
However, several leaders of Greece’s predominant Orthodox church have protested plans for the visit, including the arch-con-servative Metropolitan Serafim of Pireus, who warned Greeks on Sunday the “immoral visit” risked “contamination by heretical evildoers, unrepentant in our sacred lands.”