Russian Orthodox visit to Rome signals a thaw

MOSCOW (RNS/ENI) A Russian Orthodox official’s five-day visit to Rome, including a meeting with the pope, is being seen as a sign of thawed relations between the two churches under Pope Benedict XVI and the new Russian Patriarch Kirill I. Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion, who chairs external church relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, met with Benedict […]

MOSCOW (RNS/ENI) A Russian Orthodox official’s five-day visit to Rome, including a meeting with the pope, is being seen as a sign of thawed relations between the two churches under Pope Benedict XVI and the new Russian Patriarch Kirill I.

Orthodox Archbishop Hilarion, who chairs external church relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, met with Benedict on Friday (Sept. 18) at Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence. He also took part in a service at the Catacombs of St. Callixtus and spoke of the martyrdom of the early Christians in Rome.

“Now, when the Orthodox and Catholic churches are not in Eucharistic communion, and when many Protestant denominations have deviated from the fundamental principles of Christianity, we must understand clearly that division is a sin that tears apart the body of the church and weakens the strength of Christian witness before the secular world,” Hilarion said, according to the Russian church’s Web site.


During his visit, Hilarion also met with Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Casper later told Vatican Radio that “the situation in Moscow has very much improved … We have overcome the tensions … We are in a new situation.”

Through much of the post-Soviet era, relations between Moscow and the Vatican were tense as a newly resurgent Orthodox church accused the Vatican of proselytizing in the former Soviet Union. The late Pope John Paul II longed to visit Russia, but his requests were repeatedly turned down.

Relations remain tense between Moscow and Istanbul, where Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is considered the spiritual leader of world Orthodoxy. Moscow says Bartholomew’s primacy is honorary and his jurisdiction does not extend beyond his own church. Leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches have recently spoken of each other as allies in defending traditional spiritual values in the secular world, particularly Europe.

Signs now point to a meeting between Benedict and Kirill on neutral territory. Plans for such a meeting in Austria in 1997 between the late Russian Patriarch Alexy II and John Paul fell through at the last moment.

Last May, shortly after Kirill was elected to lead the Russian Church and Hilarion succeeded him in the external relations department, Hilarion told Ecumenical News International that “such a meeting is very close, as close as never before.”

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