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CNN Sunday Morning

Pope Reaches Out to All Faiths

Aired May 06, 2001 - 08:13   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The pope's journey across the eastern Mediterranean retraces the biblical travels of St. Paul the Apostle as the 80-year-old pontiff spreads the word of peace.

And joining us now from New York to discuss the pope's pilgrimage is Father Thomas Reese, a Catholic priest and author of the book "Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church." Father, good morning.

REV. THOMAS REESE, AUTHOR, "INSIDE THE VATICAN": Good morning.

PHILLIPS: Well, I have to address this because you see the pope, you see that he's frail and I just feel compelled to ask, should he be making such a trip? I mean this is very exhausting and very stressful.

REESE: Well, many of his advisers try and talk him out of making these trips, but he's committed to being a pastoral pope that visits these countries to do whatever he can to help improve relations between Christians and other groups, Christians and the Muslims or Catholics and Orthodox. This is something he's committed to and he's like an Olympic athlete, he just keeps going and ignores the pain.

PHILLIPS: It's pretty amazing. And he's saying he's retracing the steps of St. Paul the Apostle. Why do you think now is such a pertinent time for him to take this journey? Why does he see it that way?

REESE: Well, I think he wanted to make these journeys during the jubilee year. But since he couldn't make them at that time, this is his first chance to visit countries like Greece and Syria and these are very important for him because these are countries where, in Greece, the majority, the vast majority of people are Orthodox and he wants to reach out to them, and in Damascus they're Muslims and he wants to show that Catholics and Orthodox Catholics and Muslims can live at peace together.

PHILLIPS: And, you know, he's made an apology to the Greek Orthodox leaders and we all know culturally and politically, an apology is a pretty powerful move. We saw what happened with the China stand-off. Why do you think he's doing this?

REESE: Well, this is something that he committed himself to do at the beginning of the jubilee year, at the beginning of the new millennium. He felt that it was important for Catholics to enter the new millennia with a commitment to ask for forgiveness for our sins. Just as we begin celebrating the Eucharist by acknowledging our sinfulness, he felt that as we began the new millennia, Catholics should acknowledge that, yes, we have sinned in the past and we're sorry for that and ask forgiveness from god.

So, I mean he is a man who understands history and history's impact on the present time. And so he realized how important it was to the Orthodox community to hear this apology from the head of the Catholic Church.

PHILLIPS: And not only the Greek Orthodox leaders, but this pope has made many apologies in the past couple of years, many that have surprised a lot of the public. Why do you think he's being so out of the box and so progressive?

REESE: Well, I think he sees this ass an extremely important thing to improve relations between Catholics and Orthodox, between Catholics and Jews, between Catholics and Muslims. We look back over the last thousand years and see all of the terrible conflicts that were caused by religious divisions and he does not want to see that happen again in this millennium. This has got to stop and he wants to take the initiative to make sure that these kinds of conflicts come to an end and that we can act as brothers and sisters and work together for peace and for the common good of humanity.

PHILLIPS: Father Thomas Reese, what a nice message for a Sunday morning. Thank you so much for joining us.

REESE: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right.

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