The Orthodox Ecumenical
Patriarchate celebrated its foremost feast day today, the day of Saint
Andrew, the Apostle of Constantinople, but it also marked the successful
end of a legal battle with the Turkish state over the Buyukada
orphanage.
The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, after meeting with a
delegation from the Holy See led by newly appointed Card Kurt Koch, the
new president of the Council for Christian Unity, expressed his emotions
in an interview with AsiaNews.
“Today is a great day for our Great Mother Church. The
orphanage on Princes Island (Buyukada) has been given back to us. What
we inherited from our ancestors has also been returned to us. We could
not tolerate the injustice done to us. We first turned to Turkey’s
courts. Since we lost all of our cases, we turned to the European Court
of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which gave us justice,” the Patriarch
said.
The implications of the return to the Patriarchate of
the ‘Tapu’ (title deed) are of great significance.
“The Turkish
government did not appeal against the court’s ruling, starting instead
the procedures to return us the orphanage,” Bartholomew said. “I want to
stress the tapu by Turkish authorities is issued in the name of our
Patriarchate, as Rum Patrikanesi. This means not only the return
of the orphanage but also the official recognition of our Patriarchate
as a legal person. This is a positive step.”
“Our struggle must teach us never to put down our
spiritual tools and always trust Divine Providence, which knows when and
how to overcome human obstacles and weaknesses,” the Ecumenical
Patriarch said.
Ioannis Ktistakis, one of the lawyers that represented the Fener (the Patriarchate) in the case, spoke to AsiaNews about the case after the Ecumenical Patriarch received the tapu.
“We fought to re-establish civil rights in Turkey. Our
struggle was first about rights, and only secondarily about a title
deed. It was about re-establishing rights in this country as in any
other country since the rights of a centuries-old institution like the
Ecumenical Patriarchate had been violated.”
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