A direct intervention, an unmediated contact. With his call to the Vatican in recent days, the chairman of the Department for External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk has placed himself at the forefront of an unexpected attempt to accelerate dealings between the Holy See and the Patriarchate of Moscow.
He made a clarification which was not on the agenda, to facilitate the meeting between Benedict XVI and the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill. An historic "face to face" meeting that now seems less distant.
Moscow is laying out its request: if the Vatican resolves the issue of the Ukraine, the historic meeting between the Pope and the Russian Patriarch will finally be able to take place.
During the present pontificate, relations have improved considerably between the Church of Rome and the bulk of Orthodoxy, represented by the Russian church.
Both are increasingly in agreement about wanting to deal with what they consider to be the prime duty of Christians in Europe: a new evangelization of all those who are far from the faith. It is for this purpose that the Pope has decided to devote a specific Office of the Roman Curia to the new evangelisation.
In practice, however, there is one obstacle: the Ukraine. For Russians, the Ukraine is their birthplace. Russia arose in Kiev more than a millennium ago from the Viking principality of Rus', and it was there that it converted to Christianity; that is where the archetypes of its faith, art, liturgy, and monasticism lie.
But the Ukraine is also home to the most populous Eastern rite Catholic Church in the world, with more than five million faithful. They appear identical to the Orthodox, in their Greek-Byzantine liturgies, their customs, and their married clergy. They differ only in their obedience to the Pope. What the Orthodox Russians fear is that Rome will decide to elevate the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to a Patriarchate.
Indeed, nothing is more intolerable to the Russian ecclesiology than a "Roman" and rival patriarchy in a territory where there is already an Orthodox patriarchate. All the more so when it is the patriarchate of Moscow, which since the sixteenth century has called itself the "Third Rome".
So these are the facts: if Rome shows that it does not want to elevate the Greek Ukranian Church to the patriarchate, then a meeting between the Russian Patriarch and Pope Benedict XVI can be held.
Today the Orthodox Church has 30,142 parishes, 160 dioceses, 207 bishops and a total of 32,266 clergy. At the end of January 2009, Kirill (formerly Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, and for twenty years chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate) took the place of Alexy II, focusing from the beginning of his mission on the convergence of positions between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church on important social issues today: “We have similar positions on many issues facing Christians in the modern world. These include aggressive secularization, globalization and the erosion of traditional moral principles.”
Compared to the “big chill” between Moscow and Rome during the pontificate of the Pole, Karol Wojtyla, a lot of resistance to the Holy See in recent years has vanished. "We must emphasize that on the major social issues Benedict XVI has taken a position close to that of the Orthodox," the Patriarch of Moscow said a year ago in a report presented to the bishops of his Church, in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.
The report stated that differences are actually increasing with the Protestant denominations: "The Russian Church has found that Protestant communities are collaborating less and less in the cause of preserving the Christian heritage, because of the relentless liberalization of the Protestant world."
A distance that was accentuated by the election of a woman Bishop, Margot Kassmann, as head of the Evangelical Church in Germany.
According to Kirill, in fact, "unfortunately, it has not only stopped promoting an authentic spread of Christian values in a secular society, but many communities prefer to form their own criteria according to this society."
Three years ago during the Italy-Russia Dialogue Forum of Civil Societies, there was significantly created the volume Europe. Spiritual Homeland, published in a bilingual Italian and Russian edition by the Patriarchate of Moscow in cooperation with the association "Sofia", to collect the speeches that Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI had dedicated to Europe over the course of a decade. To the extent that the Pontiff sent a message in which he expressed his thanks "for the devout and significant gesture, made by all those who contributed and for the feelings that inspired it."
And in this cultural "Ostpolitik" the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, or Vatican publishing house, in collaboration with the Association "Sofia", has published the book by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, Kirill, entitled Freedom and Responsibility In Search of Harmony. And the book was presented at the Catholic University of Sacro Cuore in Milan, in the presence of the President of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Archbishop Hilarion of Vookolamsk who is now calling for a rapprochement in rapid stages between Moscow and Rome.
"Without the values of Christian humanism Europe is lost," explains Mikhail E. Shvydkoi, adviser to President Dmitri Medvedev of the Russian Federation for International Cultural Cooperation.
“It is necessary to incorporate into Europe the various forms in which we can and must honor God's presence in society. The big challenge is to honor God in society without the multiplicity of faiths and denominations in Europe becoming a cause for conflict."
A contact facilitated by the Jesuit Milan Zust, responsible for Relations with the Patriarchate of Moscow at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, a supporter of building that trust and mutual respect that ensure a stable dialogue and to place the values of religion at the center in Europe.