If you want just a bit more wrap-up, go to the last two pages of this thread at the Papa Ratzinger Forum. Translations of articles in the European and Turkish press, with interesting tidbits here and there, including a nice photo of that event – not very widely reported (we mentioned it here, though) of what happened Thursday night when several hundred Turkish Catholic young people gathered under the Pope’s window to greet him.
Mons. Georg Ratzinger worries about his younger brother the Pope, but "He wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest," he told the German illustrated weekly magazine ‘die aktuelle’, which reports on celebrities and social life.
"Of course, I fear for him," the 82-year-old ex-Choirmaster of Regensburg Cathedral said. But, he added, he is confident that "God holds His hand over him."
He said the Pope had refused suggestions he wear a bulletproof vest when he visits Turkey. "My brother does not need that. God is with him."
Sandro Magister, on the Armenian issue:
At the end of the liturgical prayers, the Pope addressed them, and said, among others: "I thank God for the faith and Christian testimony of the Armenian people, transmitted from one generation to the next, often in truly tragic circumstances such as those you experienced in the past century."
With those words, Benedict XVI referred to the extermination of Armenians living in Turkey that took place towards the end of the Ottoman Empire.
Last March 20, receving a delegation of Armenian bishops and priests at the Vatican, the Pope was much more explicit. In his address to them, he evoked that episode with the expression metz yeghern, the great evil, which for the Armenians is analogous to the word shoah that the Jews use to refer to the Holocaust:
"The Armenian Church was a participant in the sufferings which the Armenian people suffered in the name of tehe Christian faith during the years of terrible persecution that remains in history with the sadly significant name of metz yeghern, the great evil.
"How can we not remember in this respect the many invitations by Leo XIII calling on all Catholics to aid the Armenian people in their poverty and suffering? Nor can we forget the decisive interventions of Pope Benedict XV when, with profound emotion, he deplored: ‘Miserrima armeniorum gens prope ad interitum adducitur’ (AAS VII, 1915, 510)”.
But in Tukrey, prudence was obligatory. The Turkish governmetn will not tolerate the use of the word extermination or genocide about the Armenians. Whoever does it can be accused in court of the crime ‘insulting Turkishness."
The Catholikos of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Karekin II, who spoke of genocide during a visit to Turkey in June 2006, is the object of a judicial inquiry by the procurator of Istanbul to determine whether he used the word in an anti-Turkish context.
Benedict XVI was careful not to say anything that would put the 80,000 Armenians now living in Turkey under any risk.
But anyone who has ears to understand would have understood what he said. That coded message was also addressed to Turkey’s civil and religious authorities.
An intriguing nugget from the Patriarch, in an interview at Zenit:
Q: The addresses and common declaration you signed are "lofty" and compromising. Have you also spoken of the future?
Bartholomew I: In this respect, I can say that I spoke with His Holiness of something — something that we could do. I presented him with a proposal which I cannot now elaborate on, as we await an official response, but I can say that His Holiness was very interested and that he received it favorably.
We hope it can be undertaken as it is directed to that ecumenical progress that, as we have affirmed and written in the common declaration, both of us are determined to pursue.
Q: Why are you so determined?
Bartholomew I: Unity is a precious responsibility, but at the same time a difficult one which must be assumed if it is not shared between brothers. The history of the last millennium is a painful "memory" of this reality.
We are profoundly convinced that Benedict XVI’s visit has incalculable value in this process of reconciliation, as, in addition, it has taken place at such a difficult time and in very delicate circumstances.
Without a doubt, with the help of God we are offered the opportunity to take a beneficial step forward in the process of reconciliation in our Churches. And perhaps, with the help of God, we will be given the opportunity to surmount some of the barriers of incomprehension among believers of different religions, in particular between Christians and Muslims.
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