Relations between the two churches have been frosty for centuries because of the legacy of the Great Schism of 1054 and the recriminations, including mutual excommunications, that followed. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, visited Cyprus in June of 2010.
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Talk of a Pope-Patriarch meeting has been aired for a quarter of a century; there were rumours in the 1990s that John Paul II and Alexei II were about to come face to face, first in Hungary, then in Austria.
The Orthodox church has previously reached out to Protestants, and some evangelicals hoped Kirill’s rise to the patriarchy in 2009 might improve ecumenical relations. The Churches realise that those who target Christians do not distinguish between Christians, and Francis has spoken of the “Ecumenism of Blood”.
“The situation of these suffering Christians calls for urgent actions and closer cooperation between the Christian churches”, Hilarion continued.
The meeting will come less than a year after Francis’ first visit to Cuba as Pope.
The Russian church contains about two-thirds of the world’s 225 million Orthodox Christians.
Relations between the Roman and Russian churches have been fraught with disputes over what Moscow considers encroachments on its territory.
The joint declaration is expected to touch on the single most important issue of shared concern between the Catholic and Orthodox churches today: the plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria who are being killed and driven from their homes by the Islamic State group.
As such, with the ties between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church being so strong, the encounter in Havana has taken on a political flavor as well as religious. He played a key role in the recent thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba, which reestablished diplomatic ties previous year.
Francis was to meet Patriarch Kirill for two hours during a brief stop in Havana’s Jose Marti airport en route to Mexico, where the pontiff will bring a message of solidarity with the victims of drug violence, human trafficking and discrimination to some of that country’s most violent and poverty-stricken regions.
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Pope Francis has made concerted efforts to heal the breach, telling Patriarch Kirill in 2014 that “I’ll go wherever you want”.
