Crucea.ro

VATICAN CITY (Associated Press) – The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians has prayed with Pope Benedict XVI in the Sistine Chapel in an historic first and urged Catholics and Orthodox to work together to combat fundamentalism and to promote religious tolerance.

Benedict praised his guest, Patriarch Bartholomew I, on the occasion of an Orthodox leader’s first time at a service in the chapel, frescoed by Michelangelo. Bartholomew’s participation in the Vespers service and speech, in the chapel where pope are elected, is a “joyous experience of unity, perhaps not perfect, but true and deep,” Benedict said.

The two men are keen on bridging a nearly millennium-long schism between the two churches.

Gheorghe Vanau