Bartholomew thanked Turkish government

(AFP)
The spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians pressed Turkey Monday to re-open a major theological school that was shut down four decades ago.
Patriarch Bartholomew I thanked the Islamist-rooted government for recent measures to improve the rights of Turkey's non-Muslim minorities but stressed that more should be done.
"We expect further steps. Naturally, we expect the re-opening of our seminary.... Hopefully, the government will realise its good will on the issue" he said in televised remarks.
He was speaking after talks with Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, who met Bartholomew I at the patriarchate's century-old seat in Istanbul.
"The government deems it a duty to meet the just demands of our citizens who have lived on this soil for centuries. We will try to meet (those demands) through the laws and, if need be, through new arrangements," Arinc said.
Arinc was the highest-level official to visit the patriarchate since a 1952 visit by then prime minister Adnan Menderes, the Anatolia news agency said.
The seminary, on the island of Halki off Istanbul, was a major centre of theological learning for more than a century when it was closed in 1971 under a law to bring universities under state control.
The move deprived the Orthodox Church, seated in Istanbul since Byzantine times, of its only facility to train clergy in Turkey.
The European Union and the United States have long pressed Ankara to re-open the school.
Turkish officials have said they are willing to re-open the seminary but have cited procedural snags because the school does not fit into existing categories in the country's education system.
Without the seminary, the Church has no means to train clergy, making it difficult to find a successor for Bartholomew I.
To make up for the shortage, Ankara has granted Turkish citizenship to several foreign priests to enable them to serve at the patriarchate.
In another recent gesture, it has returned to the Greek Orthodox community a century-old orphanage building which had been confiscated in 1997.
However, Ankara refuses to recognise the patriarch's "ecumenical" title and considers him only the spiritual head of Turkey's tiny Greek Orthodox minority.