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vendredi 28 novembre 2014

Pope heads to Istanbul in symbolic visit

Source: http://ift.tt/eKERsB - Friday, November 28, 2014

Istanbul (AFP) - Pope Francis on Saturday heads to Istanbul for the second leg of his first trip to Turkey, in a richly-symbolic visit set to include a tour of a mosque and a meeting with the Orthodox ecumenical patriarch. Francis will touch on several aspects of the extraordinary heritage of Turkey's largest city, which as Constantinople was the capital of the Christian Byzantine world until the Muslim Ottoman conquest of 1453. He will begin his visit with a tour of Hagia Sophia, the great Byzantine church that was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople but then became a secular museum for all in modern day Turkey. His every gesture will be scrutinised later in the day when he visits the Sultan Ahmet mosque, known as the Blue Mosque, one of the greatest masterpieces of Ottoman architecture. When his predecessor Benedict XVI visited the mosque in 2006, he assumed the Muslim attitude of prayer and turned towards Mecca in what many saw as a stunning gesture of reconciliation. The Vatican later made clear he had not actually prayed in the mosque but was "in meditation". Pope Francis could make a similar gesture. Later in the day the leader of the world's Roman Catholics will celebrate holy mass at the Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul. He will then hold an ecumenical prayer in the Orthodox Church of St. George and a private meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew I, the "first among equals" of the world





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