Pope Francis will hold a historic first meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Cuba next week.
Pope Francis will hold a historic first meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Cuba next week.
According to RT, the meeting between heads the two major Christian churches would be an unprecedented move to mend a millennium-long rift between the Western and Eastern branches of the religion, which started with the Great Schism of 1054.
For Pope Francis, the meeting is the result of delicate and extended diplomacy, some of which began decades ago under Pope John Paul II, and it is another important landmark in his attempts to reconcile the Roman Catholic Church with Eastern Orthodox churches.
The New York Times informs that the breakthrough also highlights Francis’s ties to Cuba, as President Raúl Castro, via the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, “was involved in organizing the meeting". “The encounter has been under preparation for a long time — it wasn’t improvised,” Father Lombardi said at a news conference.
Moreover, the chairman of the department for external church relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, says that the meeting has been prepared for a long time. In 1996 and 1997, intense talks were held on organizing a meeting of Patriarch Alexy II, but they were stopped due to no possibility to agree on some issues. "This concerned the Greek-Catholics and proselytism of Catholic missionaries on the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate," the metropolitan added.
