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Appeal for worldwide truce during Olympic Games drawing wide support
2002-146-3
6/6/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
A half dozen Orthodox patriarchs have added their names to a growing list of church and government officials who are seeking to revive the ancient tradition of suspending wars during the Olympic Games scheduled for Athens in 2004.
'If the Olympic Truce can help us bring about even a brief respite from conflict and strife, it will send a powerful message of hope to the international community,' says the appeal, launched last November. It has since been signed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople and the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, Georgia and Serbia, as well as religious leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities.
In ancient Greece the truce enabled athletes and spectators to travel to Olympia to attend the games unhindered, according to the International Olympic Truce Centre, established by the International Olympic Committee and the Greek government to promote the idea. It quickly gained the support of Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Christodoulos of Greece who signed a joint declaration supporting 'the many voices around the world' who hoped the tradition could be revived.
Senior political leaders from China, Iran, Ukraine, Germany and Yugoslavia, as well as the European Union and the Arab League, have supported the proposal. The Truce Centre says that both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to observe the truce.
'This is an occasion for reaffirming the age-old spiritual current against war and conflict,' said Orthodox Metropolitan Jeremie Caligiorgis of France, who is president of the Conference of European Churches. 'Religious leaders can exert a real influence for peace, when time and circumstances are right.'
'The enthusiasm of Orthodox churches for this idea, which originated in traditionally Orthodox Greece, contrasts with their attitude to other ecumenical initiatives where they sense they're following someone else's agenda,' said World Council of Churches Europe Secretary Alexander Belopopsky. He said that conflict resolution was an area where churches found it 'relatively easy to work together.'
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