Friday, August 31, 2018, #2 Day #7: Ukraine Two important things took place today with regard to Russia and Ukraine. (1) Bartholomew-Kirill meeting in Istanbul on autocephaly for Ukraine. Kirill, along with the Russian government, opposes the idea; Bartholomew has said that he is willing to listen to the arguments of those in Ukraine and elsewhere [...]
Pope Francis receives in audience a Delegation of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow and says he is praying for unity. Pope Francis on Wednesday received a delegation from the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate in Moscow and expressed hope for full Christian unity, saying it is the path to peace. Expressing his wish to follow “the path of unity”, the [...]
Fr Hyacinthe Destivelle, from the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, talks about prospects for the new phase of relationships between Moscow and the Holy See While Churches in the West prepare to celebrate the Epiphany this Sunday, Christians in much of the Eastern Orthodox world, which follows the ancient Julian calendar, are gearing up for their [...]
Pope Francis has sent a message to the head of the Bose monastic community to mark the opening of their 25th international ecumenical conference on Orthodox spirituality. The Bose community, based in northern Italy, was founded in December 1965 on the day that the Second Vatican Council concluded its work. It currently numbers around 80 members, men and women [...]
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, is just returned from a 4-day state visit to Russia, with which he says Pope Francis is “pleased”. In an exclusive interview with Vatican media on Friday, Cardinal Pietro Parolin reviewed his state visit to Russia this week, pointing out its highlights and the issues as yet unresolved between [...]
The Vatican Secretary of State on Monday described the tone of his two-hour meeting with Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, as “very constructive”. Cardinal Pietro Parolin is on a four-day visit to Russia during which he is scheduled to meet the Russian Patriarch Kirill and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday [...]
Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, who is on a 4-day visit to Russia, gave a wide-ranging interview with the Russian state news agency TASS, ahead of his arrival on Monday. Cardinal Parolin speaks at length about the aims of his visit to Moscow and gives his views on various international issues. Q: Your Eminence, this [...]
Cardinal Pietro Parolin travels to Russia for a state visit on 21-24 August out of a desire to "build bridges and increase mutual understanding and dialogue" and to "multiply opportunities of encounter" with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Vatican's Apostolic Nuncio to the Russian Federation, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, made that assessment of the Secretary of State's [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "What united Orthodox and Catholics in those years was far more important than that which divided them, for they were united by love of Christ.”— Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, "Foreign Minister" of the Russian Orthodox Church, in his address on May 11 to the "World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense [...]
May 15, 2017, Monday "I saw that American leaders wanted to cooperate with Russia.”—The influential Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Oxford-educated "Foreign Minister" of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church, in an interview published today on the website of the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate. The interview follows Hilarion's four-day trip to Washington D.C. to participate [...]
