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Ecumenical patriarch to visit White House
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ECUMENICAL Patriarch Vartholomeos will begin a week-long visit to the United States by meeting President George W Bush on March 5 at the White House. The trip comes only two months after Vartholomeos-the first-ranking leader in the 300-million-strong Orthodox Christian World-undertook a sweeping move to bring together dozens of top Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders at a Brussels conference co-sponsored by European Union Commission President Romano Prodi. This will be Vartholomeos’ second visit to the White House, after a November 1997 trip when he met with then president Bill Clinton and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, the American legislature’s highest distinction. During his trip, the petriarch will discuss his continuing efforts to promote inter-religious understanding, which have been heightened in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States that claimed thousands of lives. Vartholomeos met with top Muslim leaders in Iran in January and was also a key participant in the mayor inter-religious conference organized by Pope John Paul II in Assisi, Italy. He will conduct a memorial service at “Ground Zero”, the site where the World Trade Center once stood in New York City, on March 9. Vartholomeos will meet with US Secretary of State Colin Powell before his visit with Bush and expected to discuss efforts to reopen the patriarchate’s Halki Theological Seminary, which was shut down by the Turkish government in 1971. Despite longstanding public support by the US for the reopening of the school. Ankara has steadfastly refused to allow the operation of the legendary training ground for patriarchal clergy who serve in Europe, the US and Australia. The closure is a clear violation of the provisions regarding religious freedom in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, signed by Turkey and Greece. The Hellenic Electronic Center, a website at the address www.greece.org that deals with Greek issues, told the Athens News that it has collected nearly 10,000 signatures from diaspora Greeks demanding the reopening of Halki. “We send these petitions to President Bush, the president of Turkey, the European Union and UN member-states,” site coordinator Evangelos Rigos said
George Gilson
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 action@hec.greece.org
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