There is growing speculation that the Pope’s visit to Cyprus next month for talks with Orthodox leaders could lead to a long-awaited summit between the pontiff and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I to heal the 11th-century schism between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity. In a move toward reconciliation today Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, the head of external affairs for the Moscow Patriarchate, delivered a message of greetings from Patriarch Kirill at a concert of Russian music in the Vatican attended by the Pope.
Chrysostomos II, the Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus, said this week that he hoped to arrange a summit and offered Cyprus as a possible venue. His previous attempts to arrange a papal meeting with the late Patriarch Alexei II were unsuccessful.
However, diplomats said that the death of Patriarch Alexei and the succession of Patriarch Kirill had given the reconciliation process “new impetus”.
Metropolitan Hilarion said that there were still outstanding issues between Rome and Moscow, including tensions over the role of Greek Catholics in western Ukraine. “The theological dialogue still has a long way to go,” he said. However a summit meeting was “our desire, it is a hope, and we must work for it”, he said, adding that “People and times have changed”.
The Vatican concert, the highlight of several days of “Russian spiritual culture” in Rome, was the fruit of a meeting last September between the Pope and Metropolitan Hilarion, at which they agreed to reinforce cultural links between Catholics and Orthodox Christians as a mark of “shared Christian values”.
Metropolitan Hilarion said that an encounter between the Pope and the Patriarch “should be a historic event, not just because it is the first meeting between the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, but especially because such a meeting must be sign of the intention to move our relations forward”.
He stressed that he was referring specifically to a meeting between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict XVI. “By mentioning these two concrete people I was trying to suggest a desired deadline,” he told a press conference.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, said that a summit would show an increasingly secularised world that the Western and Eastern churches “have the same positions on moral questions”.
The concert of music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky and other Russian composers also included a 23-minute work by by Metropolitan Hilarion himself for chorus and orchestra called The Song of the Ascension.
It was attended by the actress Sophia Loren, whose son, Carlo Ponti Jr, shared the conducting with two Russian orchestra conductors, Sergei Peschanski and Aleksei Puzakov.
Archbishop Chrysostomos II this week called on the Orthodox faithful to stay calm during the Pope’s visit from 4-6 June and not to heed “provocative calls” for protests or demonstrations from “irresponsible elements”.
He said that the visit posed “not even the slightest danger to our faith”, and rumours that he would sign a theological agreement with the Pope were untrue. Theological dialogue remained the responsibility of the joint Catholic-Orthodox Theological Committee.
The dissident Pancyprian Orthodox Christian Movement admitted distributing leaflets criticising the clerical sex abuse in the Catholic Church and accusing Cypriot bishops of ignoring it, but denied handing them out to schoolchildren.
The Pope’s trip will end with a Mass at the Eleftheria Stadium in Nicosia. During his Cyprus trip the Pope will also outline topics to be discussed at the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East planned for October.
SIC: TCUK