Pope and Russian Orthodox leader to hold historic encounter in Cuba
Pope and Russian Orthodox leader to hold historic encounter in Cuba
(about 11 hours later)
MOSCOW — Pope Francis and the leader of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church plan a historic meeting next week in Cuba, officials said Friday, marking the most significant steps ever attempted to heal a schism that has divided Christianity between East and West for nearly 1,000 years.
MOSCOW — Pope Francis and the leader of the powerful Russian Orthodox Church will hold talks in Cuba next week, the first meeting ever between a pope and a Russian patriarch and an encounter that some experts believe may help soothe conflicts in the Middle East.
The meeting — the first between a pope and Russian patriarch — would culminate decades of overtures for closer dialogue. The churches have been formally estranged since the 11th century over issues such as papal authority and, more recently, by disputes over Roman Catholic reach into traditionally Orthodox regions.
It isn’t clear what the agenda will be for the meeting between Francis and Patriarch Kirill I, the head of the largest and wealthiest branch of Orthodox Christianity. But experts predict it could be a significant step — if probably symbolic — toward mending a schism that has divided Christianity between East and West for nearly 1,000 years.
The planned encounter next Friday between Francis and Patriarch Kirill I at Havana’s airport also highlights apparent moves toward greater solidarity amid current worries. Among them: pressures facing ancient Christian communities in the Middle East from militant groups such as the Islamic State.
“Pope John Paul II said, ‘The church breathes with two lungs, the Eastern churches and the Western church.’ This is one of those meetings of great historic importance. It’s a good moment, and we need good moments,” said Bishop James Massa, a former longtime head of ecumenical and interreligious affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The announcement set off debate about possible geopolitical and internal church maneuvering to explain why the meeting is happening now, after decades of overtures by the Vatican.
Some experts said Patriarch Kirill is looking to elevate his global standing ahead of a rare pan-Orthodox summit slated for June. Others saw a desire by both sides to draw closer at a time of crisis for Middle Eastern Christians.
The Russian wing is the largest of the 14 self-governing sections of the Orthodox Church. Catholicism and Orthodoxy have been formally estranged since the 11th century over issues such as papal authority and, more recently, disputes involving Roman Catholic reach into traditionally Orthodox regions.
Popes for decades have been meeting with the spiritual leaders of the Orthodox Church. However, the Russian Church has been unwilling to do something similar until now.
“I told Patriarch Kirill I, we can meet wherever you want — you call me and I’ll come,” Pope Francis told reporters on Nov. 30.
[Pope also faces rifts inside the Vatican]
[Pope also faces rifts inside the Vatican]
Even the venue carries significance. Cuba, which once suppressed the Roman Catholic church as a Soviet client state, was picked because the legacy of Christian rifts remains too vivid in Europe, a Russian church official said.
For Francis, the brief summit in Havana will mark a milestone in his quest to forge closer ties among the world’s churches, a movement called ecumenism that is seen as a chief principle of his papacy.
A full reconciliation would require major changes on both sides, but warmer ties sanctioned by the highest authorities would represent one of the biggest modern shifts in the world’s religious landscape.
Chad Pecknold, a theologian at Catholic University, said the pull for Francis is obvious. “Moscow has a political and ecclesial force as the largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world,” he said.
The Russian Church is by far the largest and most influential in the Orthodox world, which is a patchwork of various churches and patriarchs.
Such a meeting has eluded several popes before Francis, including John Paul II, who directly challenged the dominance of the former Soviet Union during the early years of his papacy and later failed to win a visit to Russia following the fall of communism.
At the planned meeting — scheduled for José Martí International Airport — the two leaders are expected to sign a joint declaration. The details, however, were not immediately disclosed.
“The patriarch of Russia was the prize that could not be attained,” said Daniel Philpott, a professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. “That was always a bridge too far for ecumenism.”
Francis will fly to Cuba before traveling on to Mexico for a six-day tour of the country.
Symbolism aside, the meeting probably won’t lead anytime soon to changes in the routine faith lives of Christians. Although the Orthodox constitute the second-largest church in the world, their numbers are very small in the United States. Also, the theological divides between the faiths remain enormous, centering on the Orthodox Church’s rejection of the ultimate leadership of the pope.
Patriarch Kirill is scheduled to arrive next Thursday in Havana for an 11-day tour of South America, which will also include stops in Paraguay, Chile, and Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in Brazil.
“If you can’t agree on the mechanism for resolving conflict, then you can’t resolve conflict,” said George E. Demacopoulos, head of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University.
[Francis looks to the Middle East with concern]
[Francis looks to the Middle East with concern]
“This meeting of the Primates of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, after a long preparation, will be the first in history and will mark an important stage in relations between the two Churches,” said a joint press release.
The Orthodox Church has a complicated but interconnected relationship with the Russian government, and today some communists — including Putin — work closely with the church as a way to promote Russian identity.
“The Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchate hope that it will also be a sign of hope for all people of good will. They invite all Christians to pray fervently for God to bless this meeting, that it may bear good fruits,” it added.
For this reason, the meeting will also be watched by those connected to the conflict in Syria. Russia seeks a wider mandate for its airstrike campaign in Syria, and because of the close relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin, the meeting carries risks for Pope Francis, Philpott said.
The meeting would cap decades of outreach seeking to bridge suspicions and rifts that span both historical and contemporary grievances, which have so far blocked any papal visit to Russia.
“There is a chance that Francis could seem co-opted in a sense that the Russians in both church and state are seizing the mantle of protecting Christians worldwide,” he said.
Among the obstacles that have complicated deeper dialogue are long-held claims by Moscow that the Roman Catholics have been seeking to expand Rome-affiliated churches in traditional Christian Orthodox areas.
Meanwhile, Demacopoulos said the significance of the meeting for ecumenism is overstated. Kirill, he said, is motivated primarily by the upcoming panOrthodox synod, where he wants to be seen as a power broker.
Eastern Rite churches, which retain Orthodox traditions but are loyal to the Vatican, have been among the thorniest issues blocking attempts to heal the divisions between the world’s more than 1 billion Roman Catholics and more than 200 million Orthodox.
“This is all internal [Orthodox] posturing over who speaks for Orthodoxy,” Demacopoulos said.
[Meet the progressive cardinal with outsized influence in the Holy See]
But Massa, the U.S. bishop, said the meeting is “good for Orthodoxy. It puts pressure on the many Orthodox jurisdictions to speak with a unified voice” to the Catholic Church.
Although Catholics and Orthodox remain estranged on other issues — including married clergy and the centralized power of the Vatican — there have been significant moves over the generations toward closer interactions and understanding.
Boorstein reported from Washington. Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
The first major breakthrough came in 1964 when Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem with Patriarch Athenagoras I, then the ecumenical patriarch, known as the “first among equals,” or nominal leader of the Orthodox churches.
It was the first encounter between a pope and an Orthodox patriarch in more than 500 years. The meeting led to the lifting of mutual excommunication edicts and the Catholic-Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965 that called for greater harmony among the churches.
An apostolic letter by John Paul II in 1995 encouraged unity between the two branches of Christianity and opened the way for a historic visit to Rome by the current ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II made a landmark trip to mostly Orthodox Greece and issued an apology for the ravages of the Fourth Crusade, which in the early 13th century sacked Constantinople, now Istanbul, the seat of the Eastern church.
In 2006, Pope Benedict XVI was hosted by the Bartholomew in Istanbul in a visit that brought protests from some archconservative Orthodox but cleared the way for more exchanges.
[Gallery: Francis’s first Africa trip]
The relationship between the two churches also has been influenced by secular politics.
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, a senior Russian church leader, told reporters that the patriarch did not want to meet the pope in Europe because of its links “to the sad history of the division and conflicts between Christians.”
But the patriarch agreed to Cuba, he continued, because of conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere where “an authentic genocide of the Christian population by extremists requires immediate measures and closer cooperation between the Christian churches.”
The remarks from the church official dovetailed, as they often do, with the Kremlin’s portrayal of the conflict in Syria as one between the legitimate government of President Bashar al-Assad and extremist militias. When Russia began airstrikes last year in Syria to back its ally Assad, Patriarch Kirill called the effort “a holy battle.”
Discussions on a meeting between the pope and the patriarch had been held as far back as 1996, when church officials drew up plans and a joint statement to be signed by Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Alexy II in Hungary.
But the negotiations collapsed because of disagreements about the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Rite church that the Moscow patriarchy complained was proselytizing in its traditional sphere of influence.
Those concerns were reignited during the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, when the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church sided with the protesters, angering the Moscow patriarchy and the Kremlin.
At the same time, Pope Francis has been careful not to wade into the conflict. However, he angered Ukrainian protesters by calling the conflict in that country a “civil war,” a term that supporters of the new government believe obscures Russia’s role in the conflict.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Vatican has been very careful in its references to Ukraine,” said Andrei Zolotov Jr., a writer on religion and the executive editor in Europe for Russia Direct, a political journal focusing on Russia. “The Vatican has made calls for peace, said it is praying for peace, but not taking sides.”
Previous pontiffs, meanwhile, have been appraised with a possibly harsher eye by the Kremlin. The Polish-born John Paul II directly challenged the former Soviet Union during the early years of his papacy. His successor, Benedict, was often seen through the prism of his former role as the Vatican’s chief overseer of Catholic doctrine.
Murphy reported from Washington. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Read more:
Read more:
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
After four months, Russia’s campaign in Syria is proving successful for Moscow
New Russian legislation could ban holding hands in public if you’re gay
Putin threatens Turkey for shooting down Russian warplane
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
