{"id":453,"date":"2008-01-29T14:26:38","date_gmt":"2008-01-29T14:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop.php"},"modified":"2008-01-29T14:26:38","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T14:26:38","slug":"pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","title":{"rendered":"Pope Mourns Greece&#8217;s Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Associated Press<\/strong><br \/>\nVatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI mourned the death of Greece&#8217;s Orthodox leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, and praised him Tuesday for having &#8220;opened a new era&#8221; in relations with the Vatican that helped forge greater Christian unity.<br \/>\nIn a telegram of condolences, Benedict recalled that Christodoulos had hosted Pope John Paul II on a landmark visit in 2001 &#8211; the first time a pope had visited Greece in nearly 1,300 years. Christodoulos followed up with a visit to the Vatican in 2006.<br \/>\nThe visits, Benedict wrote, &#8220;opened a new era of cordial cooperation between us, leading to increased contacts and improved friendship in the search for closer communion in the context of the growing unity of Europe.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe said he hoped the archbishop&#8217;s successor would continue to build on Christodoulos&#8217; &#8220;pastoral achievements.&#8221;<br \/>\nChristodoulos died Monday at the age of 69 after a monthslong battle with cancer.<br \/>\nBenedict has said that healing the 1,000-year-old rift with the Orthodox Church is a priority of his papacy.<br \/>\nHe was sending a top Vatican official, Cardinal Paul Poupard of the office for inter-religious dialogue, as well as the No. 2 in the Vatican&#8217;s office for Christian unity to Christodoulos&#8217; funeral Thursday, Vatican officials said.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Associated Press Vatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI mourned the death of Greece&#8217;s Orthodox leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, and praised him Tuesday for having &#8220;opened a new era&#8221; in relations with the Vatican that helped forge greater Christian unity. In a telegram of condolences, Benedict recalled that Christodoulos had hosted Pope John Paul II on a&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pope Mourns Greece&#039;s Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Mourns Greece&#039;s Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Associated Press Vatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI mourned the death of Greece&#8217;s Orthodox leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, and praised him Tuesday for having &#8220;opened a new era&#8221; in relations with the Vatican that helped forge greater Christian unity. In a telegram of condolences, Benedict recalled that Christodoulos had hosted Pope John Paul II on a&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-01-29T14:26:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pope Mourns Greece's Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pope Mourns Greece's Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity","og_description":"Associated Press Vatican City &#8211; Pope Benedict XVI mourned the death of Greece&#8217;s Orthodox leader, Archbishop Christodoulos, and praised him Tuesday for having &#8220;opened a new era&#8221; in relations with the Vatican that helped forge greater Christian unity. In a telegram of condolences, Benedict recalled that Christodoulos had hosted Pope John Paul II on a&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-01-29T14:26:38+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop","name":"Pope Mourns Greece's Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-01-29T14:26:38+00:00","dateModified":"2008-01-29T14:26:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/01\/pope-mourns-greeces-archbishop#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Pope Mourns Greece&#8217;s Archbishop Christodoulos, Praises Role in Fostering Unity"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}