Vatican City, Aug 3, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican Secretary of State’s visit to Russia later this month comes at a crucial juncture for the country, and is packed with both political and religious significance.
He is expected to meet with President Vladimir Putin and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church during the trip.
On a political level, the visit of Cardinal Pietro Parolin – the dates of which have yet to be announced – comes as Russia faces rising tensions with the West over Syria and Ukraine, and possible meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Just this week the U.S. slapped Russia with more economic sanctions due to Russia’s involvement in the election. The decision prompted Putin to expell 755 people from its U.S. embassy and consulates.
On a religious level, Cardinal Parolin’s visit also comes at a key time, falling just a year and a half after the historic February 2016, meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The meeting marked the first time leaders from each Church sat down together since the Russian Orthodox Church was founded some 400 years ago.
While there might be fear and criticism regarding their engagement with Russia, “the Vatican is nevertheless willing to take this risk,” seasoned Vatican analyst Robert Moynihan told CNA.
“On the world scene there is no more important and more significant relationship right now than that between Russia and the West,” he said. So for the Vatican “to bring the highest diplomatic figure to the center of Russia and to have him speak with the highest authorities is a dramatic and significant gesture on the part of Pope Francis.”
“The benefit of direct contact and of sitting and talking is so great, and the threat of wider conflict in Ukraine and of deeper division between the West and Russia is viewed in Rome as so dangerous, that the Vatican … is willing to publicly make this trip and underline the fact that they have hope that these types of talks can lessen tensions,” he said.
“So this is the delicacy of the moment. I think it’s a courageous act on the part of the Vatican.”
Moynihan is an American journalist and is the editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine. Holding a Ph.D in Medieval Studies from Yale University, he is also founder of the Urbi et Orbi Foundation, which is dedicated to building relations between Catholics and other Christians throughout the world.
Throughout his career he has taken a special interest in Russia, having traveled there some 30 times since 1999.
Moynihan said the significance of Cardinal Parolin’s visit and the meetings he will hold have deep historical roots, making the trip a pivotal moment not only for the present, but also in terms of what the future could look like.
Political Relevance
Quoting an Oct. 1, 1939, BBC broadcast with Winston Churchill, Moynihan said Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” As such, it’s something “difficult to penetrate, to understand, [and] is a fascinating and important country.”
Russia is “a country that we should not put into a corner and condemn, but a country we should engage with and a country which can teach us many things,” he said.
In many ways still grappling with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia is in a sense trying to find its place, he said, adding that the complexity of the current situation has been triggered at least in part by the events that followed the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Among these events are the re-unification of Germany, the integration of Eastern bloc countries into Europe, and current questions on Russia’s own integration into Europe and what role border countries – namely the Baltic states and others such as Belarus and Ukraine – will play.
Looking specifically to Ukraine, Moynihan pointed the severity of the situation, and noted that most Ukrainians would sadly recognize that the democratic process in their country is going though “an extremely difficult transition period.”
This is due largely to the conflict in the eastern region of the country, which has killed more than 10,000 people since April 2014, and crippled their economy.
With Cardinal Parolin’s visit, the Holy See will have the opportunity to play a similar role to the one it had in helping to broker restored ties between the U.S. and Cuba during the Obama administration, leading to the thaw of a 50 year freeze in relations.
Part of this mediation could come through the Catholic Church’s close ties with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is 4-5 million people strong in a country of 40 million, and with the Latin and Orthodox communities in Ukraine.
“I’ve always thought there could be a religious off-ramp that could cut through the geopolitical and political haggling and distrust to say we are all human beings, we all have the faith in God and in Jesus Christ,” and even with differences, are able to go beyond “this geopolitical conflict,” Moynihan said.
In looking at the situation between Russia and Ukraine from both the religious and geopolitical sides, the Vatican recognizes “that it’s always good to have channels of communication open,” he said.
“The idea that the Vatican and that Cardinal Parolin himself continually emphasize that it’s better to communicate and to talk than to be in a cold, non-communicative standoff.”
Religious Relevance
Cardinal Parolin’s expected meeting with Patriarch Kirill comes as part of what Moynihan termed “a longing” to restore at least partial, if not full, unity among the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
Since the 1964 meeting of Bl. Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, the two traditions have reached a point “where the profound suspicion and distrust of some past centuries has diminished by the hard work of thoughtful men of both Churches as they’ve come to respect and appreciate the faith and learning of their counterparts.”
There are still those in the Orthodox community who view Rome with suspicion, believing them to be a controlling entity that would limit their freedom and strip them of their traditions. On the other hand, many in the Latin rite hesitate to draw closer to the Orthodox for fear that they are often closely linked with their governing states.
According to Moynihan, many fear that the meeting between Cardinal Parolin and Putin would be used “as a piece in a chess game for geopolitical purposes,” to make Russia seem less aggressive.
“The Vatican is nevertheless willing to take this risk,” he said, because they have hope the meeting might help “prepare the way for a just peace in situations of conflict and for closer union between these thousand year-divided Churches.”
Turning to the days of St. John Paul II, Moynihan noted that the Polish Pope, who was very familiar with Russia and the Soviet regime, had said that “the Church needs to breathe with two lungs, that we need to have closer relations with the Orthodox.”
Russian Orthodox themselves were “brutally and cruelly suppressed” under the Soviet Union, he said, noting that thousands of churches were burned, many thousands of Orthodox Christians were arrested, and hundreds of priests executed.
“The atheist, communist regime was a brutal regime for our Christian brothers in the Soviet Union and in Russia, so I think this is a cause for us to feel compassion toward them,” Moynihan said.
When faced with accusations that the Russian Orthodox Church is nationalistic and is being used as a puppet of the government, the journalist said he insists that, in his opinion, the Russian government “is attempting to become more of a normal country’s government.”
“It’s in reaction to the ideological rigor of the communist system that they are still torn by the mixture of nostalgia for the Soviet time and the attraction of this Western, liberal democratic culture.”
“They’re right in the middle of this transition process,” he said, noting that in recent years they have been rebuilding their churches and re-studying Christian tradition.
In his opinion, Moynihan said efforts are those of a people trying to return to the “wellspring of faith” that was cut off for 70 years by “a very pitiless, tyrannical, atheist regime.”
“For this reason I feel up and down the line we ought to engage with the Russians and with all Eastern Europeans, and that we should gain from them a sense of how Christians can survive under cultural and political pressure as we ourselves face our own challenges in our increasingly post-Christian Western societies.”
In this sense, Cardinal Parolin’s visit marks “one more step in a multi-decade, multi-century process in which the Church tries to keep communications with the Eastern Churches.”
One point Cardinal Parolin and Patriarch Kirill are likely to touch on in their upcoming meeting is the joint declaration signed by the Patriarch and Pope Francis during their meeting in Havana last year, which highlighted the need to work together to protect the environment, the poor, and the persecuted.
But odds are, when he meets with Putin, Cardinal Parolin will try to move the political pen on touchy issues, reinforcing the idea that the Holy See “can serve as a type of honest broker in between colossal powers, which are as we all know positioning themselves in very significant ways that will effect the future of Ukraine, the future of Eastern Europe, the future of Europe as a whole and the future of the world.”
So it is against this political and religious backdrop that Cardinal Parolin will enter “right at the hinge-point of this decision, of whether we will keep Russia excluded from polite society, whether we will actually confront Russia and have a conflict or a war,” Moynihan said.
“This is a dramatic moment, and I wish Cardinal Parolin all the best. I think he’s a balanced, competent, thoughtful man,” he said, but noted that there are still those who are concerned, wishing to keep Russia isolated on the global playing field.
“I take a different view,” he said. “I think it’s a trip that’s filled with hope and is something that must be done in order to allow us to evade, if we may evade, a great tragedy of wider conflict that could harm the entire region and the world.”
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Deftly spoken, Mr. Altieri. Rupnik is every bit the “inveterate creep.”
In fact inveterate creepiness seems to be a resume enhancer in Bergoglio’s Dark Vatican.
Hopefully Jesus will have pity on his little ones who are wandering in confusion like sheep with inveterately creepy shepherds.
Accurate comment, dear ‘brineyman’’. Only let’s not forget their HYPOCRISY.
Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Joseph Sciambra encountered the unwelcome sign in the Church and so left. What has really changed since 2002? After all, a predator/abuser and a possible predator enabler were placed in charge of cleaning up Dodge City. Serial abusers have little to fear from consequences. The Church does not have a lock on the market of mercy however, but the Zulocks apparently went too far. The Islamic world seems unrestrained in putting the stick about. I wear a Star of David pin — Israel’s Old Testament justice horrifies establishments everywhere and so their cries for mercy. It’s as if a John Patrick Shanley or an equivalent were scripting the Vatican and its secular partners. Prison is one thing; death row confessionals would be something quite other. Jesus wept. He weeps alone.
I have come to the conclusion that high ranking members of the Catholic clergy are intrinsically incapable of a. telling the truth and, b. doing the right thing. In others words, these clergy have seriously disordered consciences; they actually believe the lies they tell and think that the evil they do are virtues.
Thank you, Mr. Altieri for, once again and in blunt language, connecting all the dots in this most recent chapter of stunningly repugnant moral turpitude by the Church’s high prelates and the Papa Pachamama who has coddled and protected them. Let’s be very honest. They are, one and all, “inveterate creeps”. The disturbing question I wish you would address is how a practicing Catholic can possibly be “in communion” with such degenerates and how they can in moral and canonical fact claim that they in fact hold the offices and prelatial dignities that they claimed. Even beyond that, is it possible to comprehend that each and all of them have spent years, decades, and even clerical lifetimes offering daily blasphemous and sacrilegious Masses?
“The answer appears to be . . . .”
Does, doesn’t it?
Thank you for this. Another pathetic PR stunt by a pontificate that answers to and uses sexually sick, powerful men. As if God is fooled…Our colossal Church crisis is at root a faith crisis.
Perhaps AI can help us connect the dots to further expose how these episcopal wolves appoint and cover for each other. And we can all be more attuned to the voices of victims.
There is Hell to pay…
Speaking of a faith crisis, why should Pope Francis seek justice for victims of episcopal sexual abuse when he can save the planet from “ecological sins”? Pope Jellyby
“St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ.” Chesterton
In “recent months,” according to the Pontiff Francis and his nunciator for Belgium, “grave new elements have come to light” in the case of the “incestuous-sodomist-predator-EXCELLENCY-EMERITUS” Vanghelgue, 14 years after his sex abuse of his 1st nephew was exposed in the Belgian newspapers, and 13 years after his sex abuse if his 2nd nephew was exposed.
At this very late stage in the story, the “rebuttable presumption” (as they say in the courtroom), is that a bishop sodomizing the boys of his own family is definitely NOT a grave offense in the eyes of the Pontiff Francis and many (perhaps most?) of our bishops.
A case in point to drive home this presumption is to remind ourselves that the (so-called) “Society of Jesus” would not and did not expel Reverend Rupnik for sexually abusing dozens of nuns. They would only expel him for disobeying an order they gave him.
So: demonic sex abuse of boys (and nuns, or anyone), and profaning the sacrament of Holy Orders, and undermining the foundation of respect wholesomely desired and given to faithful and holy priests, and defying the Commandments of Jesus Our King = NOT A GRAVE OFFENSE.
But: insubordination to the same Pontiffs and Bishops (who show their indifference to victims of the sex abuse, their disregard for faithful priests and bishops, and their contempt for the authority of Jesus), any INSUBORDINATION AGAINST THEM is what they hold to be a GRAVE OFFENSE.
This is the sum of what’s at stake for these narcissists: their egos, and the deference “owed to them” by “underlings,” are on the line.
Their concerns are the same as the senior management in the Belgian authorities and the University of Louvain: deference and decorum must be preserved.
CiM: A home run….no, a Grand Slam!
Or, ‘The first duty of the bureaucrat is to preserve the bureaucracy.’
How does McElroy become a cardinal with his disgraceful handling of Rachel Mastrogiacomo? Big Mac pays his promoter back by carrying the papal water and making a mess. McElroy, Vangheluwe, Daneels, Rupnik. Birds of a feather seem to a protected species in the Vatican.
Does “creepyness” come in degrees? Are we all also tainted with it? Is it possible for us to discern where we stand in relation to others in our relative culpability for our own “creepyness” I have observed that throwers of stones usually live in glass houses. How strange. Oh what fools we mortals be! 🫣 Cheer up for God loves us not for what we are, but for what we could be. Yes, the Church MUST Judge, but even the judge’s feet are planted in clay.
Dear James Connor, isn’t that the same excuse the Nazi collaborators relied on?
This comment will probably not pass muster, but – in many of these abuse cases, I’ve often asked myself this – wouldn’t a well-aimed kick have been of some benefit? Followed by #2 if necessary.
Methinks that such would have been more than appropriate in ‘the case of the creepy cardinal’.
The 1st task for Pope The Next will be to begin restoring the faith of the faithful in those who are supposed to be “watching” over the flock.
Can’t those who have been abused by clergy just make it public and perhaps such victims can join together in a class action suit and maybe the Catholic legal group led by Tom Fitton offer them free legal services. It’s worth a try. Also choose men of high standards mentally, emotionally and spiritually to form seminary students. And let all those teachers be closely monitored.
Florence: Yours is a great idea but here’s another: How about the men of the town just form a posse? That should have been done just after the 1st 12 year old boy was sodomized by a cleric.
Kind of a strong suggestion from a deacon, I would think.
If you would only wear a cowboy hat, your perspective would change.
The current rot in the Church calls for a spirited response.
A darn good suggestion, “I would think,” James Connor.
Basically, what DEBP is suggesting is that when a system runs amok it generally requires a feedback loop to stabilise it.
So let’s get conversing about how we loyal-to-Christ Catholics can provide regular and persevering corrective feedback to manage the scandalously unChristian, unCatholic clergy misfeasances and malfeasances. Maybe that should be the first item on the agendas of all our current Church synods . . .
Reportage of clerical sexual abuse has to my knowledge never included the element of sacrilege the Rupnik case has — The criminal behavior of this perverted wannabe is crowned by his abuse of the elements of the Holy Eucharist in his concupiscent activity. Every tile of his mosaics should be ground to dust.
Get the jackhammers.
Yes, there have been elements of sacrilege in other cases. Although I doubt anyone has toted up a global score, I recall hearing of instances of perversion practiced on the parish altar. And the two cases of which I have personal knowledge happened in the context of catechism class for little girls.
Granted, it would be expensive to remove and replace Rupik’s hideous “art,” surely it could at least be plastered or painted over? The distinction between sinful artist and his art only fits when the art itself is beautiful. This stuff ain’t, regardless of its appeal to Those in High Places.
The laity in the pews have become numb to all this sexual abuse of minors. They do not trust the hierarchy any more. The damage has been done and will take decades to repair.
Will: God’s memory last much longer than man’s.
Armageddon, Rev 16, is a battle between Yahweh and all who who reject his sovereignty.
Yahweh wins.
All. No matter what church or religion they claim.
Going back to the Garden, we find that obedience to the rule of the sovereign is acceptance of his rulership. (“If you eat from it you will die.”)
Elsewhere, in case we missed the point, “The wages of sin is death.”
The answer to all our problems is God’s Kingdom. Per Ps 37:29, is that a good deal? If so, you should investigate your standing before it. Just to make sure, right?
There will be many surprised, as noted at Mt 7:21 ff. One surprise not mentioned there will be for those who have never considered this question or its answer: How many arks did Noah build?
All this is clarifying background to my brief answer to your comment in re “decades”.
Brief answer: Please read Mt 24:14; we don’t have decades. That should make us happy, if we’re sure we’re on God’s side.
Otherwise …
Mt 18:15-17.
From the Son of God.
Four steps; three verses.
Even for the most serious sins, notice the first goal: gain your brother.
Second goal, fair play: ‘two or three witnesses’; first-hand knowledge understood.
And, at each step, repentance and positive change also understood, to go for the next step.
Third goal, keep the congregation, and Yahweh’s name, clean. “hallowed be thy name”, isn’t it?
By now this malefactor is likely the subject of very public knowledge. So the last goal is to disassociate him and the congregation from each other.
In the time and place when our Lord spoke these words, they could mean only excommunication, (disfellowshipping in some venues).
None of these steps should take anything like 14 years.
I read recently that some Catholic site had decided to continue installing Rupnik mosaics at its site. I don’t remember where. But I am appalled. A bare wall with his mosaics ripped out and ground into dust would be most fitting. I simply couldn’t go to a place where his work is on the walls, and I certainly couldn’t worship there.
And it says everything that it took a national government in a country the Pope wants to visit to force the Vatican to do something about Vangheluwe’s status. He’ll is very real and very real people go there. Woe to those who call good evil and evil good. Please pray for the world and the country.
At this erra in church history, it is hard not to conclude that we are being shepherded by a large number of hired hands, who surrender some sheep to the wolves to ensure their own comfort, safety, status, or agenda.
One must not forget that Danneels was a member of the Saint Gallen mafia and that he boasted he was among those who lobbyied for the election of Jorge Bergoglio during the last conclave in stark contravening against the “Universis Dominici Gregis” instructions issued by the last pope JP II, punished by an “ipso facto” excommunication.
Too little, too late. This Pontificate’s credibility on the sexual abuse issue has been irrevocably destroyed due to Rupnik, Znachetta, and McCarrick. No reform will come as long as Francis remains Pope, which will hopefully not be long.
So many of you, in reply to OPs like this one, remain in your Catholic Church afterwards, it’s apparent.
Why?
Some sources estimate there are over 20,000 religions/churches in the world. Why not look around? Some will reply, ‘But the RCC was founded by Christ and is therefore the only true faith. My response is, ‘If he can’t protect it (and you) any better than he has, then your faith may be seriously misplaced.’
How sad.
Dear Doug, read The New Testament [esp. 1 Peter 1:6 & 7]
There’ve been bad apples in The Church from its start, nearly 2,000 years ago.
Only pagans demand: “What can GOD do for me!”
Catholics & other true Christians ask: “What can I do for God and for others.”
We “remain in your Catholic Church” because we experience the love of God in all things, & greatly desire to have its fullness, face-to-face eternally.
Give it a try, dear Doug. ‘Tis not to be missed.
Ever in the grace & mercy of King Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
My response is, ‘If [Christ] can’t protect it (and you) any better than he has, then your faith may be seriously misplaced.’
How sad.
A highly illustrative case of total misunderstanding, dear Doug!
Jesus Christ, THE LORD, is fully protecting His own, who persevere in this world, unto an eternity of bliss (life that is really Life), where the hurtful things of this earthly life will not even be a bad dream.
“Son, remember that in this life you received good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is being comforted in Heaven, while you are in agony.” see Luke 16:25.
Dear Doug, never forget: “He who laughs last, laughs best!”