“Worldly concerns poisoned us, weeds of suspicion increased our distance and we ceased to nurture communion,” Pope Francis said in a meeting with Archbishop Ieronymos II of Athens and All Greece, the Primate of the Orthodox Church of Greece (CNEWA profile). “Shamefully — I acknowledge this for the Catholic Church — actions and decisions that had little or nothing to do with Jesus and the Gospel — but were instead marked by a thirst for advantage and power — gravely weakened our communion.”
Pope St. John Paul II spoke similar words during his own apostolic journey to Greece in 2001.
