Over the past week, Pope Benedict XVI has been in the news; the world is paying attention to how he leads and governs the Church. The simple fact that he does so in peace and liberty is not thought remarkable. At the same time, though, another story has been unfolding that shows that it is worth remarking.

On June 26, the Supreme Court of Turkey, sitting in Ankara, decided that the "ecumenical" title of the Patriarch of Constantinople (now Istanbul) has no standing in Turkish law. The court ruled that the patriarchate was simply a Turkish body set up for the local Orthodox Christian minority, and therefore could not claim the international role that an "ecumenical patriarchate" would imply.

In Orthodoxy, the various national churches are autonomous, but the Patriarch of Constantinople is given precedence in honour as the head of the ancient Christian capital of the East. His role is therefore "ecumenical," extending throughout the whole world.

"The primacy of the patriarchate has been, for 17 centuries a spiritual, historical and honorific title of Orthodoxy," said the current patriarch, Bartholomew I. "In the Orthodox Christian world, primacy establishes hierarchical relationships and expresses a purely religious status; that is, it has theological significance."

The fact that the Turkish court would concern itself with such matters is not surprising; while worship is largely unmolested in Turkey, the government denies Christian churches the normal rights to own property and carry out their activities in full liberty. Bartholomew is hampered in the administration of his office, and now the court has attempted to redefine his status.

The 17 centuries in Bartholomew's statement take us back to a time well before there was a split between Catholics and Orthodox. The Patriarch is referring to the decision in the 4th century by the Emperor Constantine to leave Rome and transfer the capital of the Roman Empire to the East, to his new, eponymous city of Constantinople.

Recent events highlight how important that decision was for the subsequent 1,700 years of the Christian history. Constantine not only legalized Christianity, but gave

it his powerful support, building the great churches of St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome, and the churches of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Nativity in Bethlehem. It was he who summoned the first great ecumenical council, at Nicaea in 325, in which the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ were solemnly defined. He bequeathed to the early Christian Church its basic form of administration and governance, which endures to this day. Yet it may have been his decision to move east that was most significant of all.

Constantine set out to build a new capital for strategic reasons, though surely the project was not untouched by vainglory. Rome was vulnerable, as later events would show; the Eternal City was sacked in 410 by the Goths. The move to Constantinople granted the empire, or parts of it at least, another thousand years until the conquest by the Ottomans in the 15th century. It was a brilliant strategic decision.

But the religious effects were even more enduring. The move out of Rome left the papacy less encumbered by the imperial court. The political and strategic downgrading of Rome granted the pope greater freedom of action in his own city, and the capacity to extend that governance abroad. The papacy remained entangled in temporal affairs until 1870, and was not immune from political pressure, but it did not live under the imperial thumb.

Meanwhile in Constantinople, the patriarch of the "second Rome" had to cope with a local emperor, and his freedom to teach and to govern was circumscribed. It was difficult to act as an ecumenical patriarch when there was a universal emperor across town. The move to Constantinople planted the seed for the "national" principle in the east, which eventually led to Orthodoxy being organized along national, rather than universal, lines.

That national principle proved disastrous when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, placing the patriarch under the rule of a non-Christian empire. Ever since, the relationship of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the rulers of Istanbul has been a difficult one. What happened last month is just the latest squeeze on the patriarch by the civil authority -- a present danger for some 17 centuries.

The liberty of the Church has been the occasion of some of the critical moments in history, both sacred and profane: Pope Leo the Great versus Attila the Hun in the 5th century; Pope Gregory VII and the Emperor Henry IV at Canossa in the 11th century; King Henry VIII and St. Thomas More in the 16th century; Pope John Paul II and the Soviet empire in the 20th century. But more important, arguably, for the liberty of the Church in the West was the non-conflict right at the beginning: Constantine's decision to leave Rome. In the East, Constantinople is still suffering to this day.