The doves took flight

…and the Pope has landed. Benedict is back in Rome, after a most successful visit to Turkey this week that seemed to captivate the world.

In one of the final events there this morning before journeying back, he released white doves before a statue of one of his predecessors. Perfectly symbolic of his mission of peace.

Vatican Information Service reports:

At 8.30 a.m. today, the Pope celebrated Mass at Istanbul’s Latin Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, in the presence of faithful from various communities present in the city and from a number of Catholic rites.

Namely,

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, Armenian Apostolic Patriarch Mesrob II, and Syro-Orthodox Metropolitan Filuksinos Yusuf Cetin, as well as representatives from the Protestant Churches…

Various languages were used during the Eucharistic celebration, including Latin, Turkish, French, German, Syriac, Arabic and Spanish. The entrance antiphon and the “Sanctus” were left to the Armenian Catholics; the responsorial psalm and the offertory antiphon to the Chaldeans; the proclamation of the Gospel to the Syro-Catholics.

In the courtyard of the building is a statue of Benedict XV (1914-1922), erected by the Turks in memory of that Pope’s commitment in favor of the Turkish victims of World War One. An inscription on the statue reads: “To the great pontiff of the world tragedy, Benedict XV, benefactor of peoples without distinction of nationality or religion, in recognition.”

That description fits his namesake successor as well, Benedict XVI. In his final homily at this liturgy, Benedict stressed the mission of the Church, which stands against some of the charges and accusations coming out of worried jihadists this week.

“The Church’s mission is not to preserve power, or to gain wealth; her mission is to offer Christ, to give a share in Christ’s own life, man’s most precious good, which God Himself gives us in His Son.”

“You know well,” the Pope told his listeners, “that the Church wishes to impose nothing on anyone, and that she merely asks to live in freedom, in order to reveal the One whom she cannot hide, Christ Jesus. … Be ever receptive to the Spirit of Christ and so become attentive to those who thirst for justice, peace, dignity and respect for themselves and for their brothers and sisters.”

Asia News is reporting that his homily made a reference to all the attention lately on Christianity and Islam, as he spoke to the small, packed church.

He said: “Your communities walk the humble path of daily companionship with those who do not share our faith, but who declare ‘to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God’ (Lumen Gentium, n.16).

This was where he said the Church wishes to impose nothing on anyone.

Monks with cowls and Metropolitans in their great mantles stood by the altar. For all of them, there was a papal exhortation to fraternity, which rounded up the homily:  Live among yourselves according to the word of the Lord: ‘by these they will know you are my disciples, if you love one another’.”