Vatican City - Visiting Orthodox leaders told
Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday that theological dialogue can resume soon, and the pontiff urged both sides to apply new vigor to efforts to overcome their differences.
Benedict received several top churchmen who were sent by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox, for Wednesday's Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to mark the feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Delegation leader Metropolitan John of Pergamon told the pontiff that Orthodox churches had agreed to nominate two delegates to the international commission for theological dialogue between the two churches.
"This will allow the resumption of theological dialogue in the near future, concentrating on crucial ... themes, and in particular on the primacy" of the pope, he told Benedict in an address.
The two churches split in 1054 over several questions, including the primacy issue. More recently, relations have become tense by Orthodox charges of aggressive Catholic missionary work in eastern Europe, and by property disputes.
Theological dialogue was interrupted four years ago. Exactly a year ago, Pope John Paul II and Bartholomew stressed the need to resume the dialogue aimed at achieving unity.
Benedict told the delegation that so far the "process of theological and historic clarification ... has already borne appreciable fruit."
Benedict seemed eager to seize on his predecessor's enthusiasm for overcoming differences with the Orthodox.
"We feel the need to unite forces and not spare energies so that the official theological dialogue, begun in 1980 between the Catholic church and the Orthodox churches together, resume with renewed vigor," Benedict said.
The commission was announced in 1979 when John Paul paid a call at the patriarchate's headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, a visit early in his papacy that marked his determination to improve relations.
The tensions that flared after the downfall of Communist regimes in eastern Europe in the last 15 years prevented John Paul from realizing his dream of visiting Russia.