Pope Francis meets with Patriarch Kirill in Havana, Cuba on Feb. 12, 2016. / L’Osservatore Romano.
Rome Newsroom, Apr 27, 2022 / 12:15 pm (CNA).
The long-awaited second meeting between Pope Francis and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church will not take place for now. The pope himself announced the news in an interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nacion published on April 22.
So we will have to wait longer for the next encounter between the pope and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. This allows further time to consider where the two Church leaders could eventually meet.
One location spoken about behind the scenes is Bratislava, the capital of the Central European country of Slovakia, which the pope visited last September.
Pope Francis told reporters as he returned from Malta earlier this month that the Middle East was being considered as a possible location for the meeting, thus confirming rumors that had spread since the start of 2022.
When Lebanese President Michel Aoun announced that Pope Francis would visit Lebanon on June 12-13, some concluded that the summit would take place in the Land of the Cedars. But the organizers had from the beginning intended the meeting to take place in Jerusalem, perhaps just after the Lebanon trip.
Jerusalem was considered an ideal location for various reasons. For one, the Moscow Patriarchate does not view it as a place where the Orthodox are discriminated against. It is, above all, a neutral territory outside of Europe, where Catholic-Orthodox tensions persist.
The historic first meeting between Pope Francis and Kirill took place at Havana airport in Cuba, another country outside Europe where the Orthodox do not consider themselves to be persecuted.
There was another idea: to echo in Jerusalem the landmark embraces of Athenagoras I and Paul VI in 1967 and Bartholomew I and Pope Francis in 2014. This act would have made it clear that both the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Patriarchate of Moscow have strong friendships with Rome.
For Moscow, it would have been a highly symbolic gesture, considering the climate of hostility that has existed with Constantinople since it recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, an autocephalous church that no longer depended on the Moscow Patriarchate as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had since the 17th century.
But paradoxically, the factors that made a Jerusalem meeting an attractive option prompted the pope to cancel the encounter — at least for now.
The Holy See did not want the potential meeting to be exploited amid the Russia-Ukraine war and it did not want to be drawn into intra-Orthodox debates.
While the meeting has been postponed, could it ultimately take place in Kazakhstan — another venue that has been mentioned for some time?
Kazakhstan’s government has announced that Pope Francis will visit the country on Sept. 14-15 to participate in the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. According to a project defined even before the pandemic, Patriarch Kirill was also invited to the gathering.
But the possibility of a meeting in Kazakhstan also had a downside: the Central Asian country’s link with its neighbor Russia. Kazakhstan is the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Another possible location mentioned was Hungary. This hypothesis was based on the desire that Pope Francis expressed to return to the country that he visited for a single day last September.
The suggested venue was Pannonhalma Archabbey, one of Hungary’s oldest historical monuments. This was considered in 1996 as a possible meeting place between Pope John Paul II and the then head of the Russian Orthodox Church Alexy II. The encounter did not, of course, take place.
The idea would have been for Pope Francis’ trip to coincide with a visit to Hungary by Patriarch Kirill, marking the restoration of the Orthodox cathedral in Budapest or the inauguration of the new Russian Orthodox church in Hévíz, western Hungary.
But this hypothesis faded away, to be replaced by the idea of a meeting in Slovakia, a country that the pope called “a message of peace in the heart of Europe” during his September trip.
The proposal of a meeting between Francis and Kirill in the capital Bratislava was advanced by Ján Figeľ, the special envoy of the European Union for religious freedom from 2016 to 2019.
Why Bratislava? Partly because it is the capital of a country that borders Ukraine and is receiving refugees from the war-torn Eastern European country. And also because it is a nation at the center of Europe, the continent that experienced Soviet oppression and knows the need for reconciliation.
“Peoples and the Church,” Ján Figeľ told CNA, “need to share important messages and commitments of loving faith and truth, courage, peace, reconciliation, and brotherhood, now mainly in and for Europe.”
He added that, “conscious of the historical spiritual and political divisions in Europe, and facing the reality of bloody conflict in the east of Europe, we must urgently converge our effort towards true Christian brotherhood and unity on this continent, where Christianity gave roots and orientation to its cultures and identities.”
Slovakia is a bridge between East and West. The opening lines of its constitution refer to the “the spiritual bequest of Cyril and Methodius,” the “Apostles to the Slavs” who are venerated by both Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
John Paul II spoke of a Europe that needed to breathe with two lungs — eastern and western — and for Figeľ, “this grand vision is still possible and achievable.”
“But the war must end,” he said, “and its consequences cannot represent any imperial expansion of Russia, religious or mental triumphalism, but an actual conversion of Eastern European nations to truth, respect for the dignity of all, proper reconciliation, and shared responsibility.”
Therefore, Bratislava is a strong candidate to be a meeting place for the pope and the Moscow patriarch, the first of its kind in Europe.
Figeľ added that the potential meeting could also “gather together other groups of goodwill, organized lay Christians,” faith-based organizations, and civil society organizations.
“For example, the ICLN [International Catholic Legislators Network] and the IAO [Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy] could start their regular biannual joint meetings in the center of Europe,” he suggested.
In this way, Figeľ said, the meeting “may inspire and encourage the missing post-war process of reconciliation and integration in Eastern Europe as we witnessed in Western Europe, starting with France and Germany under Robert Schuman’s plan.”
“Importantly as well, the name of the city [Bratislava] resonates exceptionally with the Holy Father’s repeated calls for human fraternity. Indeed, ‘brati’ and ‘slava’ in the Slovakian language mean ‘Glory to brothers,’ ‘Glory to brotherhood,’ as ‘brat’ means brother and ‘slava’ is glory. This meaning is the same in other Slavic languages. So, the pope and the patriarch can express, confirm, and visualize their brotherhood in Bratislava in the center of the two Christian and European lungs.”
Figeľ noted that the Holy See, led by Pope Pius XII, had been a “very active supporter” of the reconciliation process in Western Europe.
“Many people hope to stop this war soon,” he said. “After transitional justice and punishment of crimes, an updated Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Ukraine must follow and an offer of a new, values- and rules-based supranational cooperation oriented towards peace, justice, and the common good, with the vision of integration of Eastern countries into one community, representing Europe whole and free, in a common European house.”
This proposal is now before Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, as well as their respective advisers, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Metropolitan Hilarion in Moscow. Naturally, the moment needs caution, and every meeting must be considered carefully. But every possibility must also be explored.
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Oh please, “listening and dialogue” sessions are another installment of the American bishops’ tactics of delay, deflect, and deny. Anyone who can read a newspaper or view a news portal on the internet knows the length and breadth and depth of their betrayal of the Catholic faith and their profound corruption, and that includes the bishops themselves. The com boxes on these thousands and thousands of stories should give them everything they need to know, and it is not much. The Catholic faithful in this country — and I mean the Catholics who actually go to Mass on Sundays, believe Church doctrine, and follow magisterial Church teaching — are not crying out for “a code of conduct for themselves, a hotline for receiving complaints, and a framework for judging bishops who commit abuse or cover it up when committed by others” but for Catholic bishops to start believing and acting like Catholic bishops. The time for “policies and procedures” is long gone. What is required is ACTION by these hireling shepherds to cleanse the filth of homosexuality and pederasty completely from our Church. If that is not done and soon, I fear that we will witness an eruption of the anger and disgust that have been building for 30 and even 50 years.
Succinctly and well said.
Absolutely! Well said!
I like to use an analogy about this issue when speaking about it with my friends. It is as if a house has leaking plumbing and people in it are getting wet. For the longest time, the leaky pipes were ignored and tacitly accepted. The people who got wet were ignored or given a towel and told to go dry off.
Eventually it was decided that people shouldn’t get wet, so discussions were held about the leaky pipes, and policies and procedures were put in place to protect the people in the house from getting wet any further, and punishments were established for those who allowed someone to get wet, but this didn’t stop the leaky pipes which still surrounded them.
Ultimately, the leaky pipes need to be repaired or replaced. If they aren’t, the structure of the house will eventually rot and collapse, regardless of how many people we are able to keep dry.
The house is our Church. The people are the laity and young seminarians. The leaky pipes are the morally deviant clergy amongst us. Getting wet is the sexual abuse which has been perpetrated by that morally deviant clergy and the Church hierarchy which has turned a blind eye to the issue.
What is needed is action to remove the moral rot that pervades our Church, not just to protect us from it, and the removal of Church leaders who fail to take action.
Perhaps the main “underlying issue” is that there is not much “under-lying” but an abundance of lying.
“The crisis is real, the need is obvious. The next move is up to the bishops.”
Go directly to law enforcement, the civil authorities.
Consider Bergoglio’s own inconsistent sense of “zero tolerance “and Bergoglio’s surgically implanted, conversation guider, Cupich.
The laity must own “zero tolerance.”
C’mom, lets look at history. The scandal of 2002
was never resolved. It merely got worse. The
clergy can’t be allowed to investigate themselves.
They have already failed miserably. Time for the
long arm of secular law enforcement, i.e. RICO.
Don Black
Rome, Ga.
April 12th: It is mind boggling that Bishops have to come up with a code of behavior – if they don’t know by now how they should behave then they should go into a monastery and live a life of prayer and penance. This going back and forth, up and down, in and out trying to figure out a moral code is – disturbing. Just live the Gospel as taught by Jesus in all its fullness and dimensions. Study the life of Christ and of the saints and then discuss that among yourselves…how you may follow the example of Christ and His saints. Nothing more, nothing less.
Amen Florence!
The grave offenses of the clergy cry out for justice, while the clergy mumble about policy. How long, O Lord? How long?
Good article overall, though frankly I’m suspicious of “listening and dialogue” sessions involving the laity. While the church probably couldn’t have something identical to the system of checks and balances in the U.S. constitution, I do think we can learn from it. One big problem here is that bishops cannot govern their own–few people can. If your boss or trusted subordinate has a sexual harassment complaint against him/her, are you the one to investigate? No. In addition, the hierarchical nature of the culture in the church puts obedience and deference to authority over doing the simple, common sense and morally right thing. Think about it–in a sane world, Archbishop Gomez would order Mahony to stay away from public events (certainly confirmations) on pain of arrest. And he’d tell Rome to piss off. We don’t live in a sane world; I think sometimes this absolutist notion of obedience has emasculated the clergy into being fearful and protecting their own hides.
Back to the structural issue. We need national or regional bodies that have an investigative and juridical function–and that have a good measure of independence and autonomy. They should be run by professionals–judges, attorneys, ex-FBI agents. They should be transparent as well as give due process to the rights of the accused. A lot of commenters here dismiss the need for policies and procedures. I too am underwhelmed by HR statements, but we do need structures and clear rules about how to handle these problems. There can be and is nuance in sex abuse and misbehavior. One size doesn’t necessarily fit all.
As much as I respect Russell Shaw and value his insights, I find his intervention strangely myopic. There is no point to a synod or council, or whatever, if the great issues to be addressed are “authority, accountability, and participatory decision-making” without any reference to clerical and particularly episcopal homosexuality. So far from helping, a council or synod that ignores that factor will actually be a further setback, as it will only further separate the episcopacy from the mind and sentiments and fervent desires of faithful Catholics.