Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict XVI Meeting Being Planned

11/12/2009
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

‘Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow’


Relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches are improving and a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, may be in the cards.

MOSCOW (Catholic Online) – The warming of relations between the Catholic and orthodox Churches are evident in their pledge to work together in the defense of life, marriage and family, and other issues of mutual concern in an increasingly secularized age. However, the question still looms as to when Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict XVI will meet.

“Interfax News” reported the following on Thursday, November 12, 2009:

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Meeting Possible between Pope, Patriarch Kirill

“Moscow, November 12, Interfax - Relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches are improving and a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, may be in the cards, a Russian Orthodox bishop said.

"Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow," Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Department for External Church Relations, told reporters in Moscow.

"There are no specific plans for the venue or timing of such a meeting but on both sides there is a desire to prepare it," the Archbishop said.

Preparations for such a meeting must involve finding "a common platform on all remaining points of dispute," the Archbishop said.

One such issue is the relations between the Uniate community and Orthodox believers in Ukraine. In the early 1990s, "the fragile interdenominational balance was upset and a serious situation took shape that still exists," Archbishop Hilarion said.
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See also from Catholic World News, "Russian Orthodox official discusses possible meeting between Pope, patriarch."

posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 8:04 PM