The juncture was opportune for spending this year's Easter at Mystra. To begin with the Latin and Greek Easter coincided this year (for the first time since 2004), this being an apt reminder of the unity that ought to exist among those professing to be Christians. It is indeed high time that the pettiness of obscure medieval dogmatism that led to the separation of the two halves of the universal church be superseded, in order for that essential oneness to be restituted.

That togetherness was not of course without internal frictions, mutual antipathies and brutalities such as the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople in 1182 and the equally cruel retaliation of the Crusaders in 1204. This is the way of the world. But it is fair to say that over and above such secular divergences the honest and sincere minds on both sides still clung to that vision of an all inclusive universality which should be a guiding light today more then ever.

The con-celebration has been all the more poignant given the unspeakable scandal presently ravaging the western church. The revelations concerning the pervasive child abuse by western priests the world over amount to a great human tragedy and a brutal travesty of Christian faith. It is a tragedy first and foremost for the helpless victims of the heinous assault which may have lasted for many generations, if not centuries. Their tormentors must expiate for their crimes before ecclesiastical but also civilian criminal courts. This is elementary and must have precedence over any other consideration.

But this is also a tragedy for the Roman Catholic church itself, an institution which -for all its historical perversions and deformations- has also functioned, in the person of its best representatives, as a repository for moral and aesthetic values essential to European civilization. It is thus outrageous that its present leadership has not found the moral courage to face up to the enormity of the situation and by sacrificing itself and its trappings of power to atone for the despicable deeds done under its umbrella and, it seems, under its very protection. Pope Ratzinger may have been, as cardinal, the vaunted "Rottweiler of faith" (more accurately of Roman dogma), but his response to the present crisis has been exceedingly meek, to the extent of actually lending credence to the worst of the swirling suspicions. He has, unexpectedly, been a very inconsequential Pope anyway, given the "iron" reputation that preceded him. But this was an opportunity to show any mettle he may have had. His half-apologies and legalistic excuses, however, have managed to bring out once again the worst aspects of the authoritarian institution which is the Roman ecclesiastical monarchy, in a way that even managed to outline the procedural affinities that this closed and dogmatic system of government has with all other forms of totalitarianism. For it is indeed a universal and trans-historical reflex of despotic systems to blame sinister conspiracies of traitors trying to malign the god-appointed rulers rather than own up to their own egregious misconduct.

The sight of a physically and morally weakened Pope hiding behind lame protestations of ignorance with regard to behaviors that he was personally responsible for rooting out is indeed pathetic. Even if he had not known (which cannot be granted on the facts), he ought to have known. Either way he can no longer lead his institution, and the best service he could render it under the present circumstances would be to take all the blame on himself and resign even while protesting his personal innocence. That would be a true imitatio Christi, and not the specious analogies he made in his Good Friday sermon about "going against worldly opinion". Worldly opinion in this case is that the sexual and other physical torture of helpless children is a ghastly crime, and worldly opinion happens to be true.

For the rest Cardinal Sodano's highly irregular intervention before last Sunday's Ubi et Orbi simply reinforces the impression that the Roman hierarchy are either in a state of denial or in cover-up mode Nixon-style. The worst blunder, of course, in this misguided circling of the wagons was Father Cantalamessa's infuriating claim that the world reaction to the scandal is akin to anti-Semitism. The good father does indeed sing his mass well, but its content unfortunately is one that will not wash with any thinking person, whether believer or atheist. That Cardinal Brady, the Primate of Ireland, is still mulling his position and refusing to relieve us of his presence is another situation that makes the blood boil. Only the Archbishop of Dublin so far has managed to find the right words. This unsavory tumult, incidentally, brings to mind the sexual scandals that rocked the church of Greece a few years ago. But in that case at least the homosexuality which is still rampant among its ranks involves consenting adults. It may violate their pretended moral canons, but it is not a criminal matter, just one of sin. The Roman situation, on the contrary, is criminality pure and simple.

Noting these facts is not tinged with the slightest malice against the institution of the Catholic Church, its clergy or, God forbid, its members and believers. It is rather a cry of despair that they currently lack the moral leadership that they and their cultural contribution deserve -by one who believes moreover that if Greek Christendom had managed to preserve its living ties with its Latin sister the fate of the Greek people as a free and leading component of a pan-European Renaissance would have been infinitely happier.

And this brings us back to Mystra, for that astonishingly beautiful citadel in its brilliant spring attire is the enduring symbol of that double-sourced and double-woven unity of the European spirit.

This aspect of it has, unfortunately, been smothered to death by the platitudes, distortions, silences and outright falsifications of "national" education in the modern Greek state. But no matter. It still breathes a serene and confident universality that transcends temporal borders and hatreds, touching every historically cultivated mind with its sweet synthesis of forms and notions culled from the wide reaches of pan-Christian endeavor.

It was, as is well known, founded by the Franks, and the Latin apse is still the dominant architectural motif on its secular buildings. Later it was ceded to the Constantinopolitans, and eventually under the dominance of its Palaiologue despots it flourished as a focal point of resurgent Hellenism in thought and feeling. Its chief philosophical personage, Plethon, transplanted authentic Platonism to Medici Florence thus igniting one of the most significant episodes of humanist culture. Plethon in old age abandoned Orthodoxy altogether in an effort to revive the classical Hellenic Pantheon. Meanwhile, the imperial policy of the Palaiologues was decidedly and consciously henotic (unionist), i.e. premised the survival of the Greek speaking half of the Roman Empire upon the reaffirmation of the ancient ties with Latin Christianity. And in this they had the support of the flower of Constantinopolitan intelligentsia, secular as well as ecclesiastical.

That this policy did not in the least imply renouncing the distinct Hellenic cultural identity of Byzantium is splendidly in evidence in Mystra, whose astonishing church frescoes although imbued with a naturalistic freshness of western provenance still manage to express in sublime form the mysticism and majesty of Byzantine religious feeling. The exhilarating vitality of Palaiologian art, right on the eve of the Ottoman disaster, is not only a supremely tragic sight, but more importantly a heartening affirmation of the heights of creativity that the human spirit can attain under conditions of cultural osmosis and mutuality.