After his meeting Kirill, Francis will head to Mexico City where Saturday he will meet with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto before holding mass at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe – the most visited Catholic site in the world.
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A spokesman for the Orthodox Church in Moscow said he could “100 per cent guarantee” that there was no political agenda behind the two religious leaders’ meeting.
In a joint declaration, they also urged the world to protect Christians from persecution in the Middle East.
The Vatican is hoping the meeting will improve relations with other Orthodox churches and spur progress in dialogue over theological differences that have divided East from West ever since the Great Schism of 1054 split Christianity.
Patriarch Kirill arrived in Havana on Thursday with his long beard, tall domed hat, white stole and black robes.
The Russian Church is the largest and most powerful in the Orthodox faith, which is made up of a number of separate churches. “I greatly appreciate his desire for unity”.
But mutual suspicion between Rome and Moscow, as well as the complications of the Cold War, had prevented any meeting between the Russian church leader and the Roman pontiff.
No surprise then that the ‘Milenio’daily features an eloquent cartoon with the Pope being warmly welcomed at the airport as he steps out on to a pool of blood instead of a red carpet.
Cuban President Raul Castro stood to the side during the ceremony, enjoying another moment in the global limelight after receiving Francis a year ago and restoring diplomatic relations with the United States recently, meeting President Barack Obama in Panama in April. Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill is visiting Cuba, Brazil and Paraguay.
The pope and the patriarch are meeting for the first time Friday in Cuba and the event will mark a slight closing of one of Christianity’s most enduring divisions.
The Russian Orthodox Church takes a stronger stand on these issues in public than Pope Francis, who supports these teachings but often speaks of other issues such as poverty and protecting the environment, which were also mentioned in the text. Nonetheless, the ecclesial communities which emerged in these historical circumstances have the right to exist and to undertake all that is necessary to meet the spiritual needs of their faithful…
Kirill was also greeted by his communist, atheist host Castro, 84, when he arrived yesterday.
The first major concern listed in the joint statement was the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq.
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The pope was due to spend three-and-a-half hours in Cuba on his way to a long-planned visit to Mexico. He will end his Mexican journey Wednesday in Ciudad Juarez, the border city on the other side of El Paso, Texas.
