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JUNE 2013
Ecumenical Patriarchate Ecumenical Patriarchate Hosts Conference on Edict of Milan The Ecumenical Patriarchate honored the 1,700th anniversary of Emperor Constantine the Great’s “Edict of Milan,” which granted legal status to Christianity, by hosting an international and interfaith one-day seminar on May 17 in collaboration with the Council of European Episcopal Churches at the Conrad Hotel in Istanbul, Turkey. The seminar was sponsored by the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in America. The Order was represented by Archon Constantine G. Caras who offered remarks to the participants on behalf of the Order. The joint moderators were Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (Ecumenical Patriarchate) and Péter Cardinal Erde of the Council of European Episcopal Churches (CCEE). The seminar officially opened with a keynote address by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who also organized a pilgrimage with the seminar’s participants the following day to the site of St. Constantine’s death in Hereke, Turkey. On Sunday, Feast of the Myrrh–Bearing Women, His All-Holiness presided over a Pan-Orthodox Divine Liturgy at the Monastery of the Life-Giving Spring at Baloukli. Over the weekend, the Orthodox Churches were represented by Ilia II, Catholicos and Patriarch of all Georgia, and hierarchs from the Churches of Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland,
Nikolaos Manginas photo
and Albania. In addition to the delegates from the CCEE, other Roman Catholic representatives included Archbishop Antonio Lucibello, Apostolic Nuncio in Ankara, and Bishop Louis Peletre. Also in attendance among the delegates and dignitaries were distinguished professors and diplomatic personnel from many countries. Patriarch’s Address In his keynote address, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said, in part: “The anniversary that we are celebrating and honoring provides occasion for us to ruminate
on these events, considering and reflecting on the development of the contemporary world 1,700 years after the divinely-inspired Emperor established in action and legislation the fundamental principles, on which modern Christian societies – and by extension and analogy, the entire world – are based to this day. “In our time, we observe various nations and countries mimicking one another, especially in this age of so-called “globalization,” when the velocity and quantity of information and misinformation, of truth and fabrication – to the point of distortion for some trivial or ephemeral “interest” in events as well as the relentless slander of people and circumstances – of justice and injustice, are broadcast “in a split second” throughout the world; we
observe a tendency for all things to be permeated by only a secular spirit. “We sadly ascertain as contemporary human beings, and particularly those of us ‘called to a sacred vocation,’ another reality, beyond the expected and surely desirable ‘good transformation.’ More specifically, traditions are increasingly abandoned; faith is regarded as an individual affair and people endeavor to marginalize it within society; ideals and values – namely, the forces which have constituted and conserved nations through the centuries – are scorned; education is assaulted and secularized; legislation is estranged from its religious basis, which always – and especially from the time of Constantine to this day – comprised the theoretical foundation of all law; sin is no longer conceived as ‘evil’ and adopts the garment of variation, that is to say merely of personal choice; immorality is accompanied and concealed by the scornful pretext or complex of fleshly weakness, while the morality of Christ is trivialized; in other words, people overlook the penitential cry: ‘Lord, have mercy,’ which is the very content of faith and life. “Despite this disappointing development in human affairs, which is all the more apparent in the secularized Western society and civilization, the same Western world retains – in its heart and mind, as well as in its fabric and structure, its governance and legislation, its arts and values – the ethos and spirit of the Church, of Constantine the Great, and of the Gospel. Whatever good and righteous remains in today’s secularized society in fact derives from the Gospel and the Church.”
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