Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill was already expected to visit the Caribbean island and Pope Francis will stop there for the meeting on Friday on his way to an official visit to Mexico, said Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
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It only took 1,000 years, but Pope Francis has managed to mend fences with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
According to the surprise announcement, made simultaneously on Friday (Feb. 5) in Moscow and at the Vatican, Francis will make a brief stopover in Havana on Feb. 12 before continuing on to Mexico for a six-day visit.
“This was the apple of John Paul’s eye, this was his dream”, Allen said, referring to Pope John Paul II.
Modern popes have met in the past with the Istanbul-based ecumenical patriarchs, the spiritual leaders of Eastern Orthodoxy, which split with Rome in 1054.
While the meeting is an important step toward reconciliation, the metropolitan said there are still “ecclesiastical obstacles” between the Holy See and the Russian Church.
“For me, China has always been a reference point of greatness”, Francis said in the interview.
The contents of the declaration were not disclosed but Lombardi said it will be “very significant”, adding that preparations for the encounter had been long running, as the two churches look to mend millennial divisions. “In the present tragic situation, it is necessary to put aside internal disagreements and unite efforts for saving Christianity in the regions where it is subjected to the most severe persecution”.
Such a meeting eluded Francis’ two immediate predecessors, Benedict and John Paul, who both tried but failed to reach agreement with Kirill and previous patriarchs to hold talks on the prospects for eventual Christian unity.
It will be the first-ever meeting between the leaders of the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the largest in Orthodoxy.
It is a sign that the relations are going to get warmer at least between one of the parts of the Orthodox church, namely the Russian Orthodox church, and the church of Rome
I hope it will positively influence the dialogue between Russia and the West.. The Ukrainian Catholic Church was outlawed by the Soviet government in the 1940s and its property was confiscated by the government, which in turn gave some churches to the Russian Orthodox.
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Pope Francis delivers his blessing during the Angelus noon prayer he celebrated from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2015. Byzantine-rite Catholics who once could worship only in a Russian Orthodox church, returned to Catholic services and sought the return of Church property. “This means we’ve turned a page in engagement between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church and that is a very good thing”.
