[Kolokotronis]

Oh, I've known people to go to funerals for far less noble reasons than political advantage...like just making sure the *?/x#* is really dead.

With the EP, though, I suspect its a mixture of things, not including the foregoing. Given the state of relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople and the canonical precedence of each, it would be unthinkable in this day for the EP not to go, quite aside from the fact that the two did get along quite well and each found in the other a willing interlocutor.

[Kolokotronis]

There are eight Orthodox Patriarchs, at Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow, Serbia, Roumania and Bulgaria.