SUMMIT OF THE MILLENNIUM

Observers worldwide are divided in their opinion as to what was paramount in the historic meeting between Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia and Pope Francis - religion or politics? Or is one inseparable from the other?

Long before 12 February it was being stressed that Havana airport was chosen as the venue for the meeting only because of the equidistance of the routes of the Pope and the Patriarch, as neutral territory, away from any ceremonial or sacred site, so that no-one could say that the meeting was being used for political purposes. However, there is significance even in this very neutrality. After all, on the one hand there is Cuba - a Latin American and Catholic country, maybe, but until recently officially atheist, and also socialist, linked in many ways with Russia, which has an Orthodox church in its capital. But the main thing is that Cuba has been left with no contextual links with Europe and stays well outside the religious controversies of the Old World.

However, the main reason for the meeting between Kirill and Francis was the knock-on effects of political controversies. That is precisely why and now - in the context of an exacerbation of international tension - that this dialogue between the primates of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches is of special significance. Throughout its history the Vatican has more than once demonstrated its powerful diplomatic potential. Equally, it is no secret to anyone that the ROC and the Kremlin have always had a solid relationship which has never been broken, not even in Soviet times.

Joint statement

The meeting between the Moscow patriarch and the head of the Roman Catholic Church was the first in history since the Great Schism of 1054, when the Christian world was split between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches. In 1965 the mutual anathemas were lifted by Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras. However, since the founding of the Moscow Patriarchate in the 16th century, the Moscow patriarch has never met with the Pope. And now it has happened. The Patriarch and the Pope exchanged fraternal kisses and embraces on three occasions in front of dozens of cameras.

"I can't shake the feeling that we are meeting at the right time in the right place," Kirill said. Francis stressed several times that now "We're brothers at last" and said that "this meeting is the will of God".

The joint declaration, which was signed by the two primates, contains a number of curious and important things. First of all, of course, there is the much-awaited call on the international community to prevent the discrimination of Christians in the Middle East and in North Africa, where "brothers and sisters in Christ are being exterminated in whole families, villages and towns and churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned and monuments destroyed". An important thing for the two churches here is the fact that the Christians who are being persecuted are not asked whether they are Catholics, Orthodox or Anglican. "In Syria, Iraq and other countries of the Middle East it is with pain that we call to mind the mass exodus of Christians from that land in which our faith was first disseminated and in which they have lived since the time of the Apostles together with other religious communities", but also "share the suffering by the faithful of other religious traditions who have become victims of civil war, chaos and terrorist violence", the declaration states. The Patriarch and the Pope called on the international community to join together in the struggle against terrorism and put paid to violence on the planet, recalling that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have taken the lives of thousands of people and left millions without a roof over their heads or the means of sustenance. 

The primates of the two Christian churches pointed to the danger of the secularization of societies in certain countries and noted that such a state of affairs threatens religious freedom, restricts the rights of Christians and threatens to relegate them to the margins of public life. "In particular, we observe that the transformation of some countries into secularized societies, estranged from all reference to God and His truth constitutes a gave threat to religious freedom…While remaining open to the contribution of other religions to our civilization, it is our conviction that Europe must remain faithful to its Christian roots. We call upon Christians of Western and Eastern Europe to unite in their shared witness to Christ and the Gospel, so that Europe may preserve its soul, shaped by two thousand years of Christian tradition," the joint document says. The primates of the ROC and the Roman Catholic Church spoke out against the unrelenting consumerism of some more developed countries and against growing inequality in the distribution of material goods.

They also focused on the conflict in Ukraine. "We deplore the hostility in Ukraine that has already caused many victims, inflicted innumerable wounds on peaceful inhabitants and thrown society into a deep economic and humanitarian crisis," the declaration points out. The painful subject of union is also, of course, inevitably mentioned in the document. The Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC), which emerged as a result of the Union of Brest of 1596 in western Ukraine, remains the main problem in relations between the two churches. The ROC believes that in the 1990s, when the UGCC acquired official status, there was "an aggressive expansion of Greek Catholic unites in Ukraine" and, incidentally, it was this question that prevented a meeting between Aleksiy II and John Paul II in 1996-97. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has placed this centuries-old problem onto a new level.

On the other hand, the Moscow Patriarchate is aware that the Vatican does not have complete authority over the UGCC, particularly as, at least outwardly, Francis keeps a clear distance from the Ukrainian Greek Catholics. The meeting in Havana showed that acute contradictions have probably been removed. Incidentally, the question of union is deeply intertwined with political events of over 200 years ago, and although not everyone remembers them, they are echoed today. For example, during the reign of Catherine II, as a consequence of the partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772-1795), territories with a significant Catholic population became a part of the Russian Empire, and it shouldn't be forgotten that Pope John-Paul II, who was not able to have a dialogue with Aleksiy II 20 years ago, is a Pole by origin. The present Pope - Francis - who was born into the family of an Italian immigrant in Argentina, is the first papal representative of the Order of Jesuits. The order has been well known in different moments of history, but one of the main episodes of its existence was in 1773 when, because of opposition to the court of the strongest monarchs of Europe, it was abolished by Pope Clement XIV. But it so happened that a year earlier Catherine II, in an attempt to safeguard her new subjects who had emerged as a result of the partition of Poland from external influence, issued a decree banning the publication of any papal orders without St Petersburg's consent in the newly acquired territories. Thus, until 1814, when the status of the order was re-established, it existed only in Russia - legally and very actively. This probably played quite an important role in its rescue. It is also possible that Pope Francis knows his history.

Benefit to Russia

Despite plenty of coverage, compared with the Russian media, the western media was less enthusiastic about the meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch, and it took second place to the news from Syria. A number of western observers noted that Kirill would scarcely have decided on this meeting without the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that this historic dialogue in Havana probably became possible after Francis' private conversation with the Russian president last June. In the opinion of many, the Kremlin is expecting all kinds of benefits from the Kirill-Francis meeting, because the "meeting of the century" is taking place at a time of the most serious cooling of relations between Russia and the West. The Patriarch of All Russia is talking about saving the Christians of the Middle East at a time when Moscow is being accused of escalating violence in Syria, the death of innocent civilians and a humanitarian crisis. Francis also comes out against homosexual marriages, which tallies with Moscow's official position and for which he has been criticized more than once by the Western countries. As La Stampa writes, Putin's plan "is to become a starting point for Christianity and the defender of Christianity in the western world, where it is undergoing a crisis". Without doubt, in the "secularized West" will be found those who are swayed by the call to defend Christians in the Middle East and Africa, but also about protecting "traditional Christian values", especially now as hundreds of thousands of migrants flood in from the Muslim countries.

Furthermore, observers have noted that Kirill himself needs the meeting in Havana to strengthen his positions during the coming Pan-Orthodox Council, which is due to be held on Crete in June. The council, also the first in a millennium, for which preparations have been made for many years and which will bring together the heads of all 15 Orthodox churches, will be chaired by the Ecumenical Patriarch Varfolomey, who is the symbolic head of the World Orthodox Church. Incidentally, Varfolomey has a close association with Francis and is regarded as an active supporter of ecumenism. However, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia is clearly not happy that Varfolomey is, as it were, speaking on behalf of all Orthodox churches in this dialogue, because it is the ROC that is the most numerous and the most conservative in the Orthodox world.

In spite of everything

But be that as it may, despite the political situation, the world has started talking about a possible spiritual unification of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, and we are talking about 1.2bn Catholics and 165m Orthodox Christians. There will most likely be further meetings and there may even be a visit by the Pope to Russia or by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia to the Vatican. Against a solution to the important problems of today, which are happening before the eyes of the whole world community, complex theological disputes, which go way back into the centuries and are puzzling to most Catholics and Orthodox Christians, pale into insignificance. Such is the call of the times. Of course, this process is unlikely to be swift, just as the call by Kirill and Francis is unlikely to change immediately the fate of Middle Eastern and African Christians and refugees. But as Pope Francis said, a number of initiatives, "which may be carried out with the passage of time" were discussed. And that's something.