On May 4, 2001, Pope John Paul II issued an astonishing apology
On May 4, 2001, Pope John Paul II issued an astonishing apology . In a speech addressed to the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Athens, he expressed regret for an event that had occurred a full 800 years earlier. What had prompted such an unusual and belated act of contrition? The answer was the Fourth Crusade, which in the 13th century, had gone terribly astray from its professed mission of wresting control of the Holy Lands from Muslim rulers. Instead, it had brutally and treacherously attacked and looted the city of Constantinople - the seat of Greek Orthodox Christianity and a supposed ally of the Crusaders. On that day in 2001, John Paul sorrowfully described this event as “the disastrous sack of the imperial city of Constantinople, which was, for so long, the bastion of Christianity in the East. It is tragic that the assailants turned against their own brothers in the faith.” The diversion of the Fourth Crusade and the sack of Constantinople constituted one of the more shameful ...