Moscow, December 3, Interfax – The Moscow Patriarchate is still not
ruling out a possibility of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia
meeting with Pope Francis, but pointed to the factors that impeded
dialogue on this matter.
“The subject of a meeting between the Patriarch of Moscow and the
Pope is on the agenda of the two Churches, and the Holy Patriarch highly
values the balanced and genuinely Christian position of Pope Francis on
many problems faced by present-day society,” Patriarchate spokesman
Deacon Alexander Volkov told Interfax-Religion.
This makes both Churches “strategic partners” in the attestation to
the Christian moral values, the need to preserve peace and mutual
understanding between people of various faiths and nationalities, in
defending the rights of Christians in the Middle East, the spokesperson
said.
The view of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church on the difficult
situation in present-day Ukraine largely overlaps with that of the
Russian Orthodox Church, he said.
“Like Patriarch Kirill already said on multiple occasions, the only
service the Church can conduct in this conflict is a peacekeeping one
that would exclude any political preferences. And in this sense, we have
to acknowledge once again that the line pursued by the Ukrainian Greek
Catholic Church is a significant factor thwarting normal development of
the relations between the Churches,” he said.
Another factor is “the overt support for one of the parties to the
conflict, and public association with schismatics in Ukraine,” Deacon
Volkov said.
“We would like to hope that the voice of our Church will be heard and
the involvement of the Greek Catholics in the political conflict in
Ukraine will decrease, thereby creating favorable conditions for
maintaining a proper dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman
Catholic Churches, including on the subject of a possible meeting
between the Patriarch and the Pope,” he summed up.
One of these days the Pope expressed a wish to meet with Patriarch
Kirill. “I signaled to the Patriarch Kirill that I would like to meet
him. He backed the idea. I told him: ‘Invite me, and I will come over.’
He too expressed such a desire,” the pontific said on the Italian
television.
At the same time Pope Francis said that the current international
situation is not conducive to such a meeting. “Recently, the problem of
the war (in Ukraine) and many other difficulties have pushed the subject
of a meeting with the Pope to the back burner. Nevertheless, both of us
want to meet and move forward,” he added.
The Uniates, or Greek Catholics, are part of the Roman Catholic
Church; however, they conduct church services according to the Byzantine
ritual which is identical to the Orthodox one. The Uniates’ positions
are particularly strong in Western Ukraine which saw a number of serious
conflicts between the Uniates and the Orthodox Christians in the 1990s.
Tensions in the relations between the Orthodox believers and the
Uniates in Ukraine is among the factors which have for years prevented a
meeting between the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Pope.
Source: Interfax
