Vartholomaios calls for reopening of Halki School

The Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios, the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians, called at the weekend for the reopening of the Theological School of Halki, which Turkish authorities shut down in 1972.

“We are waiting for the decision which is 45 years late,” he said after a meeting with Greek Education Minister Costas Gavroglou on the island of Gokceada in Turkey, adding that “in the new Turkey envisioned by his Excellency, our President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, there is a place, we believe, for a theological school for Christians. Not a new one, but the one that was so unfairly shut down.”

The shutting down of the school, Vartholomaios said, was unfair on the Greek community (of Turkey), Orthodoxy and religious freedom.