Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill emphasised their obligation as Christians and bishops to encourage collaboration among Christians and charity for all who suffer, during their historic meeting last weekend. “I felt an interior joy that truly came from the Lord,” the Pope told reporters travelling with him as he flew to Mexico from Havana, where he met the Patriarch, the most powerful leader in Orthodox world, the first time the heads of the two Churches have met. “It was a conversation of brothers,” he said. The conversation was marked by freedom and “complete frankness”. Pope Francis said the joint statement he and Patriarch Kirill signed in the presence of Cuban president Raúl Castro “is not a political statement, it’s not a sociological statement; it is a pastoral declaration”. While the two leaders insisted on the need to stop the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa and condemned abortion and euthanasia, they used much more careful language to discuss two issues that made their meeting so surprising: the life of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the war in eastern Ukraine. For more than 25 years, Russian Orthodox patriarchs have refused to meet a pope because of what the Moscow Patriarchate claims is “proselytism” on the part of Ukrainian Catholics, who belong to one of the Eastern churches in full union with Rome. The Church was outlawed under the Soviet Union and its rebirth with Ukrainian independence has meant a loss of both buildings and faithful for the Russian Orthodox.