Large Orthodox delegations at Pope’s funeral

Vatican, Apr. 08
CWNews.com

– Orthodox Church leaders were extremely well represented at the
funeral of Pope John Paul II in an unmistakable testimony to the
late Pope’s efforts to restore unity between Christians of the East
and West.

The Archbishop of Canterbury led a large Anglican delegation to
the funeral, and there were many prominent Jewish religious leaders
(including the late Pope’s good friend, Rome’s former chief Rabbi Elio
Toaff) and delegations of Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim clerics. But
the most noteworthy representations came from the Eastern churches.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople was the senior
Orthodox prelate in attendance– as, indeed, he is the leading
figure in the Orthodox world. Despite frequent clashes with the
Holy See during the past decade, the Russian Orthodox Church sent
Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, the top ecumenical official of the
Moscow patriarchate. The Greek Orthodox patriarchates of Alexandria
and Jerusalem were represented, respectively, by Metropolitan Petros
and Bishop Theoktist. A total of 36 prelates represented the 12
autocephalous churches of the Orthodox world: the Orthodox churches
of Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, the Czech
and Slovak republics, Cypress, Greece, Poland, Albania, and America.

There were also many representatives from the Oriental Orthodox
churches– those Christian bodies that broke with Rome in the 5th
century after the Council of Chalcedon. Among them were the Coptic
patriarch of Egypt and the Syriac patriarch of Antioch. Catholicos
Karekin II led a substantial group from the Armenian Apostolic Church,
which had drawn very close to Rome during the latest pontificate. Also
present were Patriarchs Abba Paulos of Ethiopia; Mar Dinkha IV of
the Assyrian Church, and an envoy from the Eritrean Orthodox Church.