✣ The Pope finally meets the Patriarch
What happened? Pope Francis met Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana – the first time that the Bishop of Rome has met the head of the Russian church. Cuban President Raúl Castro hosted the meeting, which took place during the Russian leader’s visit to Russian Orthodox communities on the island. The meeting came at a time of Russian-Western tension over Ukraine and Syria, and was met with apprehension by Ukrainian Catholics. What the British media are saying The Guardian reported the Pope’s words upon embracing the Patriarch: “Finally! We are brothers.” But hanging over the meeting was the implication that President Putin was using his clerical ally to win support in the west. “According to analyst Alexei Makarkin, the only reason the Patriarch agreed to the meeting was because Putin wanted him to,” the paper reported. “The main topic of the discussion – persecution of Christians in the Middle East – plays to the Russian president’s advantage,” he said. Russia Today, the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, quoted a Catholic saying, “If people can come together who’ve been separated for 1,000 years with hostility, even though they believe the same thing – more or less – this is a message that the world is changing, there is hope.” What the Vaticanisti are saying At Crux, John Allen urged caution, stating “It was a priceless show of goodwill at a time when religion too often seems a source of conflict and violence,” and “also a sign of hope for the embattled Christians of the Middle East, since Francis and Kirill agreed that protecting them will be a joint priority.” However, he wrote, Moscow’s motives “were open to serious doubt” and that Orthodox hostility towards Catholicism was unlikely to change. Patriarch Kirill, he concluded, got more out of the meeting than Francis. Vatican Radio was more optimistic: “Just days after the meeting the Vatican’s Apostolic Nuncio to Moscow, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, told Vatican Radio that he hopes this meeting is the first of many to come.”
