Has there ever been an Eastern Rite Pope?

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DerKreuzritter

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Has there ever been a Pope from the eastern rites?
 
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I was wondering the same question and added to that …can there be an Eastern pope in the future?
 
DerKreuzritter said:
Has there ever been a Pope from the eastern rites?
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A whole slew of them. From 678 to 752, all of the popes save one were Greek or Syrian. The makeup of the clergy in Rome at that time was overwhelmingly Greek.

Can there be a pope from one of the Eastern rites nowadays? Of course. There is no reason why not. As pope, though, he would function as the Latin Rite bishop of Rome.
 
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Yah. It is called the Byzantine Papacy period which ran from 537-752.

I assume there would have been more had the east west schism not happened.
Eastern Orthodoxy has some 300 million adherents, second largest single Church communion in the world after Catholicism.
Sure there’s eastern churches in communion with Rome but the vast majority of eastern Christians are Orthodox. It is a historical tragedy that happened.

en.wikipedia.org

Byzantine Papacy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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Praying for unity every day. One of the saddest scandales in Gods church. The animosity from some orthodox churches towards Latin Church is tragic to see. :cry:
 
That’s because Orthodox tend to never forget stuff from the past.
I think the Latin sac of Constantinople in 1204 is where the lasting hostility comes from. Some ways who can blame them either?
 
Thomasbradley312 said:
Yah. It is called the Byzantine Papacy period which ran from 537-752.

I assume there would have been more had the east west schism not happened.
Eastern Orthodoxy has some 300 million adherents, second largest single Church communion in the world after Catholicism.
Sure there’s eastern churches in communion with Rome but the vast majority of eastern Christians are Orthodox. It is a historical tragedy that happened.

Byzantine Papacy - Wikipedia
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Thanks for that, I have been reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church during my weekly Adoration and just today the Byzantine Liturgy was referenced and I was curious…what timing!
 
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What I’m curious is did these popes serve in Rome or in Constantinople at Hagia Sophia? Wasn’t the city considered new Rome?
 
Thomasbradley312 said:
What I’m curious is did these popes serve in Rome or in Constantinople at Hagia Sophia?
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The Eastern popes served in Rome. The pope is, by definition, the bishop of Rome, and his seat is St. John Lateran, in Rome. Even during the times when the popes did not reside in Rome, but in Orvieto, Perugia, Viterbo or Avignon, they were nominally bishops of Rome.
 
Yah I was just curious because of like the Avignon Papacy which the person before you clarified.
 
Technically speaking, Byzantine and Latin theological or liturgical approaches were not as different by the time of Byzantine Papacy- nowadays they differ more. It was mostly centered upon usage of Latin or Greek in Liturgies, nowadays things like Filioque, type of bread used for Holy Eucharist and others are distinction. They were not viewed as distinctive rites in that period of time (correct me if I’m wrong but this is my impression) and so it was not viewed as having Pope from different rite.

Nowadays, having Eastern Catholic Pope would be very much possible and rite of Papabile does not really matter that much. Pope would technically become head of Latin Church but at the same time, there are similar situations where Latin Bishops supervise Eastern Catholics under their jurisdiction- I suppose it would be just the same with Eastern Catholic becoming the Pope. Someone has said that Pope is omniritual by default and I would agree with that statement.
 
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