The following appeared today on the site "Sedmitza.ru" on Oct. 4:
LOS ANGELES.
The next meeting of the dialogue commissions of ROCOR and the MP
will take place in Germany, in Cologne, from Oct. 24 through Oct.
- This news comes from the secretary of the ROCOR commission,
archpriest Fr. Alexander Lebedeff.
The participants are to work out all the details of the solemn
ceremony of signing the "Act of Canonical Communion", along with a
program for the visit of the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad, Metropolitan Laurus.
Besides this, the commissions will continue discussing matters
involved in the restoration of full canonical and eucharistic
communion in the Local Church of Russia.
As Fr. Alexander noted, the signing of the Act is an event without
precedent in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church, and there
are no rules on how such ceremonies should be conducted. They will
have to be worked out for the first time.
The solemn signing of the "Act of Canonical Communion" dots the i's,
as it were, on the healing of one more of the wounds caused by the
revolution, and has enormous significance for Russia and the Russian
Orthodox Church.
The resolution on reunion of two branches of the Russian Orthodox
Church, as Fr. Alexander Lebedeff emphasized, already is having a
grace-filled effect. For example, representatives of both branches
took part in church services at the transfer of the remains of
General Anton Denikin, the philosopher Ivan Ilyin and the Empress
Maria Feodorovna to Russia.
At the forthcoming meeting, for the first time Archbishop Kirill of
San Francisco and the Western United States will be a representative
of ROCOR, replacing Bishop Ambroise who has retired.
ITAR-TASS/Sedmitza.Ru