NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

'White smoke' signals between
the Vatican and Moscow?
By Benny Lai
Translated from
Secolo XIX, 2/25/08

Forgive my skepticism about this story - especially since it is interpretative and does not really report any hard news. But Lai is a veteran Vatican reporter and has written at least four books about the Papacy, and the Genoa-based Secolo XIX is the most widely read nationally of Italy's regional newspapers, so ....



It is very probable, if not certain as some would claim, that Pope Benedict XVI will meet with Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow in 2008.

And in Russia, a country that has never yet seen a Roman Pope. The one country that Pope John Paul II could not visit despite the more than 100 foreign trips he made.

The reason for the estrangement cannot, of course, be attributed only to the Great Schism of 1054 and the crystallization of enmity between Catholics and orthodox.

In January 1964, Paul VI and Athenagoras, ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople met and embraced, bridging the centuries of separation between the Eastern adn Western Churches of Christianity. A meeting and an embrace that have been repeated many times since then in various places and by their respective successors .

The problem with the Orthodox Church is rather complex because it does not have a figure equivalent to the Pope - the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople is merely 'primus inter pares' who has absolutely no power over other patriarchs, who are elected by the national orthodox church in each country.

If one considers that the Orthodox Russians alone numerically outnumber all the other Orthodox Churches combined, that Moscow likes to think of itself as the 'third Rome' as it came to be called historically (after Rome and Constantinople), and that the Patriarchate of Constantinople is very circumscribed in that it is geographically located within Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country, then it is easy to understand the delay in reaching any conclusive agreement, even without considering the political aspects of the matter.

But something has changed - perhaps because the world of globalization appears to be a spiritual desert, nad/or perhaps because of a change in Popes, with Ratzinger the theologian succeeding to John Paul II, the itinerant messenger of the faith.

It was not by chance that last December, Benedict XVI met with Metropolitan Kirill, the number-2 man in the Patriarchate of Moscow. Days earlier, of course, a papal delegation was in Istanbul for the Feast of St. Andrew - a Vatican delegation in Istanbul while the Patriarchate was at odds with the Russian Orthodox which accuses Constantinople of protecting national churches who are not inclined to recognize the primacy of Moscow!

One may say that the papal audience was intended to show Rome's 'equidistance' between Constantinople and Moscow. Metropolitan Kirill appeared to appreciate this, because in an interview afterwards with L'Osservatore Romano, he was careful to say that Patriarch Alexei indeed considered the dialog with Rome of paramount importance.

But there is also the proselytism which Moscow accuses the Catholic church of pursuing in Russia. The Patriarchate of Moscow does not welcome Catholic missionaries working in places that Russia considers its ecclesiastical territory, including those that were formerly Soviet republics.

Thus, Moscow resents the return in force of Orthodox Catholicism to the Ukraine, and missionary work by various Catholic religious orders.

The worst episode between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church took place when John Paul II wanted to formalize the presence of Catholicism in Russia by replacing the four apostolic administrations then functioning in Russia as full-fledged dioceses.

It was a normal step to take in order to provide the appropriate structures that could assist Russian Catholics. But Moscow considered it so hostile that Alexei-II used it as the pretext for refusing to meet with John Paul II.

But now, it appears that Moscow may be more reasonable. It is speculated that the Russian Orthodox authorities know there are very few Catholics in Russia compared to the Orthodox, and it will remain that way; that for Alexei-II, the problems brought about by secularization and globalization are more important; that the Russian Orthodox Church needs to ally itself with Benedict XVI in his fight for traditional matrimony, family values and various other questions connected with sexuality and bioethics - positions that the Russian Church fully shares.

And that is the starting point for drafting a 'Common Declaration' that must precede any meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch. And that is why, it is said, the Patriarchate of Moscow had expressed its warm support for Opus Dei, which has opened a Russian headquarters in Moscow. The Orthodox have expressed appreciation for Opus Dei because of its loyalty to traditional Christian values.

Il Secolo XIX, 25 febbraio 2008


=====================================================================

2/26/08
P.S. I've almost come to expect this. Everytime there's a positive-sounding story about Vatican-Moscow relations, an official statement, or at least something said by a high-ranking Russian orthodox offical almost invariably follows to douse any illusions with an icy Siberian blast! Here's an item from the Russian Interfax agency.



Moscow Patriarchate calls on Vatican
to discuss status of Catholic dioceses in Russia


Moscow, February 26, Interfax - The issue of the status of Catholic dioceses in the Orthodox lands as well as the issue of the status of the Orthodox dioceses in traditionally Catholic countries requires a "serious and elaborate discussion" in terms of the Orthodox-Catholic dialog, Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Vienna and Austria, Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, told Interfax-Religion on Tuesday.

"Many Western people think that the concept of a 'canonic territory' has lost its sense altogether in modern situation because Orthodox believers coexist side by side with Catholics, Protestants and representatives of other faiths," he said.

Recently Cardinal Walter Kasper, the President of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity said the Moscow Patriarchate's wish to abolish four Catholic dioceses in Russia that had been created by the previous Pope John Paul II, was "very unexpected."

It is hard to discern a quality difference between Catholic dioceses in Russia and Orthodox dioceses in the West, Walter said. He called on the Russian Orthodox Church to show the same openness that the Catholics are demonstrating in relation to Orthodox parishes in Western Europe and the U.S.

In 2002, Vatican made a decision to upgrade the level of Catholic structures, operating in the status of apostolic magistrates in Russia, to the level of dioceses, and this decision led to a protest from the Russian Orthodox Church.

=====================================================================

I thought this question had been settled already - at least provisionally. When Benedict XVI named Mons. Paolo Pezzi the new Archbishop for Moscow last year, the Vatican was careful to note that his formal title was not Archbishop of Moscow, since Moscow was not a regular diocese but merely an apostolic administration, and that therefore, Mons. Pezzi's formal title was Archbishop of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (the main Catholic Church in Moscow).