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Among the reasons for
improvement in relations with Vatican is that Benedict XVI doesn't strive to
come to Moscow
Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External
Church Relations Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad considers
possible a meeting between Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia and Pope
Benedict XVI of Rome on neutral territory.
‘Since Benedict became a pope, our relations have
improved. He removed his visit to Moscow off the agenda. Such a visit would not
solve any problems, but result in new ones’, Metropolitan Kirill stated in an
interview published on Thursday by German magazine Spiegel.
He reminded that till the present moment many believers
of Russia ‘did not confide in Catholics’ and that is ‘a heritage of wars and
missionary actions (of the Vatican – IF) in the 17th -18th centuries’.
At the same time Metropolitan Kirill said that ‘it is
quite possible’ for the Pope and Patriarch to meet in a third country.
‘All recent developments make this meeting possible’,
the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative stated.
He also stressed that the pontific’s nationality ‘does
not play any important role’ in the question of his possible meeting with Alexy
II.
According to Metropolitan Kirill, schism between the
Catholic and Orthodox Churches reminds of a divorce as it is resulted from
‘human sins’: West and East ‘divorced as they thought they would not need each
other’.
‘Reunion is possible only through a spiritual closing
on. We can sign as many papers as one wishes. But if we do not have a feeling
that we love each other, that we are one family, that we need each other there
will be no reunion’, Metropolitan Kirill thinks.
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