Pope meets Orthodox leader on Turkey visit

ISTANBUL, Nov 30 (Reuters) Pope Benedict's highly sensitive visit to Turkey shifts focus towards Vatican relations with Orthodox Christianity today after his conciliatory words about Islam soothed tensions with Turkish Muslims.

Benedict and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox, plan to issue a joint statement on their hopes for someday patching up a split that dates back to Christianity's Great Schism in 1054.

But after backing Turkey's bid to join the European Union and praising Islam as a peaceful religion, Benedict will continue his fence-mending with the Muslims by going to visit Istanbul's famous Blue Mosque.

With such deep-rooted divisions at stake, officials from both churches play down speculation about any breakthrough coming from the meeting, no matter how warmly the two men speak and how sincere their hopes for unity may be.

''With such a long history of separation, you cannot move in a big jump,'' Archbishop Demetrius, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States, told Reuters. ''You need a methodical, step-by-step approach.'' Benedict, who represents 1.1 billion Catholics worldwide, must also consider factors such as Turkey's suspicion of the Ecumenical Patriarch, tensions with the Russian Orthodox Church and the role of Catholic churches in Eastern Europe.

Turkey, a mainly Muslim but secular state, suspects the patriarch of aiming to create a ''little Vatican'' in Istanbul, which as Constantinople was capital of the Byzantine Empire until the Ottoman conquest in 1453.

Turkish officials avoid using the word ''ecumenical'' and usually refer to Bartholomew as the bishop of Fener, the old Greek quarter where his compound stands. The state closed the patriarchate's seminary on Halki Island off Istanbul in 1971.

There is also a polite rivalry between Bartholomew, the ''first among equals'' among Orthodox bishops, and the patriarch of the large Russian Orthodox Church, which has been renewing contacts abroad since the end of Soviet communism in 1991.

Benedict is also negotiating to meet Moscow's Patriarch Alexiy, whose church recognises Bartholomew's symbolic role but disputes his function as a spokesman for worldwide Orthodoxy.

Orthodox churches are joined in a loose union, rather than Catholicism's rigid hierarchy. As Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew has a prestigious title but directly presides over only about 3,000 Greek Orthodox left in Istanbul.

Before stopping at the Blue Mosque, Benedict will visit the nearby Aya Sofya, which was once Christianity's largest church known by its Greek name Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom).

On conquering the city in 1453, Sultan Mehmet went to the church and prayed, turning it into a mosque. As part of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's drive to modernise Turkey, it was secularised and turned into a museum in 1934.

Nationalist and Islamist Turks will be watching to see if Benedict commits the unlikely faux pas of praying in the museum.

Pope Paul VI did so in 1967, causing a diplomatic incident, but Pope John Paul II did not when he was there in 1979.

REUTERS SBA BST0616