25 years from the first visit of a Sovereign Pontiff to a majority-Orthodox country following the Great Schism of 1054
In May of 1999, 945 years after the Great Schism between Western and Byzantine Christianity, the leader of global Catholicism kissed the soil of a majority-Orthodox country, calling it the “Garden of the Madonna”.
The ecumenical visit of the Vicar of Rome to Romania laid the foundation for a bridge towards peace and “Unity!” – the rallying cry that accompanied the religious celebrations jointly attended by the Sovereign Pontiff and the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Alongside Romania’s Strategic Partnership with the United States of America, the state visit of Pope John Paul II, at the invitation of President Emil Constantinescu and Patriarch Teoctist, cemented the pillars of Romania’s Euro-Atlantic integration, at a time when the argument that democracy and a market economy needed to stop at the borders of the Catholic world was widely embraced at the global level.
The exhibition titled Romania, Garden of the Madonna. 25 years from the first visit of a Sovereign Pontiff to a majority-Orthodox country after the Great Schism of 1054 does not limit itself to merely covering the three days of Pope John Paul II’s sojourn in Romania (May 7th-9th, 1999), also attempting to present the plethora of political and religious initiatives and efforts that constituted the preliminaries of the visit, while also detailing some of its most impactful consequences. The establishment of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization itself can be regarded as one such consequence, as one of its fundamental objectives lies in the promotion of interfaith dialogue.
At the height of the Cold War, on October 27th 1986, in Assisi, Pope John Paul II hosted the inaugural edition of the “World Peace & Prayer Day,” insisting on the edification of a culture of love in a civilization of peace inspired by sentiments of universal tolerance and solidarity.
Recognised by the Vatican in 1986 and guided by the “Spirit of Assisi,” the Sant’Egidio Community promotes actions in favour of peace, dialogue and solidarity, organizing a yearly “Peoples and Religions” ecumenical meeting, each time in a different city. In 1997, in Padua, the special guest of the reunion was none other than Emil Constantinescu, the President of Romania who had launched his mandate with a powerful message of reconciliation both within Romania and across the Balkans. In the speech he gave on the occasion, the Romanian President launched an invitation that the following “Peoples and Religions” reunion be held in Bucharest. One year later (August 20th – September 1st, 1998), 800 priests and theologians, representing all of the world’s major religions, political leaders, ambassadors and high officials from the UN and UNESCO gathered in the Romanian capital to attend the first ecumenical reunion of such significance to be held in an Orthodox country.
Two meetings between Emil Constantinescu and the Sovereign Pontiff can also be rightly considered to rank among the preliminaries of the Papal visit to Romania. Firstly, the private audience accorded in the Vatican (January 17th, 1993), which Pope John Paul II would evoke in his first address on Romanian soil: “It is with gratitude that I reflect on the visit you made me in 1993, while you were the Rector of the University of Bucharest and President of the National Council of University Rectors in Romania. In you, the first citizen of this noble nation, I see all of its citizens represented; and I feel a profound need to convey to them a warm greeting of fraternity and peace, starting from the citizens of the Capital, and going outward, to the inhabitants of the villages.” The second meeting took place in Vienna (June 21st, 1998), the President of Romania having been invited to attend the Mass officiated by Pope John Paul II in Hofburg Palace’s Helden Square for the sanctification of Brother Jacob Kern, Sister Maria Restituta Kafka and Brother Anton Maria Schwartz.
The three days that the Sovereign Pontiff spent in Romania during his state and ecumenical visit were a flurry of events: official welcome at Băneasa Airport, attending a Te Deum officiated in the Patriarchal Cathedral, attending a reception in the Pope’s honour at Cotroceni Palace, attending the launch of an exhibition titled “The first four centuries of Christianity in Romania” organised in the Ambassadors’ Hall by the renowned Professor Alexandru Barnea from the Faculty of History of the University of Bucharest at the initiative of the Presidential Advisor for Internal and External Policy, Professor Zoe Petre (May 7th, 1999); celebration of a Mass at the Chapel of the Apostolic Nunciature, prayers at the Catholic Bellu Cemetery, before the Chapel of St Anne and images of the martyred bishops arrested in 1948, prayers at the “Heroes of the Revolution” cemetery, for the youths that gave their lives in 1989 in order to overthrow the communist dictatorship and gain their freedom, a Greek Catholic liturgy held in St Joseph’s Cathedral, attended by 900 prelates and 1500 guests, a meeting with the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church and the signing of a Joint Declaration for Peace in the Balkans and an End to the War in Yugoslavia, with Patriarch Teoctist (May 8th, 1999); an Orthodox liturgy in Unirii Square, officiated by His Beatitude Teoctist, followed by a Catholic liturgy held in Izvor Park and officiated by the Sovereign Pontiff (May 9th, 1999).
A few days after his return from Bucharest, Pope John Paul II’s blessing to Orthodox Romania was accompanied by a plea in favour of the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration, during a general address held in the Vatican’s San Pietro Square:
The year 1989 marked a turning point for this beloved nation as well. With the collapse of dictatorship, a new spring of liberty had begun, and so the country became a building site of the democracy which it had to edify with patience and honesty. Drawing upon its authentic cultural and spiritual sources, Romania inherited its culture and values both from the Latin civilization, as attested to by its very language, and from the Byzantine world. Her history and geographic position are an intrinsic part of the New Europe that is being gradually built following the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
The contribution of Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyła – who became Pope John Paul II in 1978 – to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of Europe’s division between democracy and dictatorship after World War II, is unanimously recognised.
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