Vatican Envoy, Orthodox Leaders to Meet

Ekaterina · Post by **Ekaterina** » Tue 21 June 2005 1:37 pm

June 21, 2005
Vatican Envoy, Orthodox Leaders to Meet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:12 p.m. ET

MOSCOW (AP) -- A top Vatican envoy was in Moscow Tuesday for sensitive talks to pursue Pope Benedict XVI's drive for better relations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, never fulfilled his dream of visiting Russia after the 1991 collapse of Communism because of disputes between the two churches.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, who heads the Vatican's office for relations with other Christians, arrived late Monday to spend three days in Moscow. He is set to meet with Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department.

Kasper will continue the dialogue with Orthodox leaders, the Vatican said in a brief statement.

The Moscow Patriarchate said Kirill and Kasper will ''discuss the prospects for cooperation between the two churches and problems which exist between them.'' It said Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II will not meet Kasper.

Alexy has said in the past that a papal visit hinged on ending what the Russian Orthodox Church described as Catholic poaching for converts in Russia and other ex-Soviet lands and discrimination against Orthodox in western Ukraine.

The Vatican has rejected the Orthodox accusations of proselytizing. It said it was only ministering to Russia's tiny Catholic community -- about 600,000 people, less than 1 percent of the country's 144 million. The Russian Orthodox Church claims about two-thirds of the population as followers.

Following Benedict's installation in April, Alexy said his visit to Russia would be possible only after the two churches resolve their longtime differences.

''There cannot be a visit for the sake of a visit. There cannot be a meeting purely for television cameras,'' Alexy said.

During one of Kasper's previous visits to Russia, the two churches set up a working group to address the controversy between the churches, but the panel has made no visible progress toward potential unity between the two branches of Christianity, split between east and west in 1054.

Ekaterina · Post by **Ekaterina** » Wed 22 June 2005 3:44 pm

June 22, 2005
Vatican Envoy Talks With Orthodox Priest
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:33 p.m. ET

MOSCOW (AP) -- A high-ranking Vatican envoy held sensitive talks Wednesday with a senior Russian Orthodox priest, cautioning that progress in healing the rift between the churches would be measured in small steps.

The head of the Vatican's office for relations with other Christians, Cardinal Walter Kasper, arrived in Moscow on Monday to pursue Pope Benedict XVI's drive for better relations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, never fulfilled his dream of visiting Russia following the 1991 Soviet collapse because of disputes between the two churches, split during the Great Schism of 1054.

''We are here to repeat our proposals,'' Kasper said in an interview carried Wednesday by the Catholic missionary news service AsiaNews. ''There must not only be steps by us. Dialogue is always reciprocal.''

Kasper sat down for talks Wednesday with Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department.

''We want to see what we can do together, study the possibilities,'' Kasper said, according to AsiaNews. ''There won't be decisive steps but little ones.''

The Russian Orthodox Church said in a statement after the talks that the parties expressed their understanding that ''cooperation between the Orthodox and Catholic churches in consolidating Christian spiritual and moral values ... can be especially important now, when the peoples of Europe and the world are suffering a moral crisis.''

Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II maintains that a papal visit to Russia would be possible only after ending alleged Catholic poaching for converts in Russia and other former Soviet lands and discrimination against the Orthodox in western Ukraine.

The Vatican has rejected the proselytizing allegations, saying it is only ministering to Russia's tiny Catholic community -- about 600,000 people in the country's population of 144 million. The Russian Orthodox Church claims about two-thirds of the population as followers.

The Vatican said it couldn't stop Ukraine's Eastern Rite Catholics -- who follow Orthodox ritual but bear allegiance to the pope -- from reclaiming churches given to the Orthodox by the Communists.

During Wednesday's talks, Kirill warned Kasper that the head of Eastern Rite Catholics in Ukraine shouldn't mention the Ukrainian capital Kiev in his title or move his residence to the city, where the Moscow-controlled Orthodox Church in Ukraine has its seat, the Orthodox Church said in a statement.

It added that if Eastern Rite Catholics in Ukraine carry out their intentions, ''that would create a serious obstacle to the development of Orthodox-Catholic relations, for which the heads of the two churches have both promised to strive.''

Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a deputy head of the Orthodox Church's foreign relations department, who attended Wednesday's talks, voiced hope that the Vatican will listen to the Orthodox concerns and take them into account.