Church

Pope and Patriarch: historic Meeting

Never before met the leaders of the Catholic and Russian-Orthodox Christians. Now welcome the Pope and the Moscow Patriarch in Havana. A large ecclesiastical event, with many pragmatic aspects.

Both sides connect to, roughly, the first thousand years of Church history. Then it came to a break. About the claim to power of the Pope, about the importance of Tradition and more points. Today, there are very different views on the relationship of Church and state. No other Christian Church has such a close proximity to the community, such as the Russian Orthodoxy. This was in the tsardom as in communism. Therefore, until today the pastoral activities of the Catholic Church in Russia, as well as the split of Orthodoxy and the Christianity in Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate vehementes Nuisance.

Now, Francis on the road from Rome to Mexico, Kyrills route leads from Cuba next to Paraguay and Brazil. And yet it is the Cuban capital, not just the random intersection of these two routes. If in the past few years about such a Spitzentreffen there was speculation, were the Belarusian capital city of Minsk or the Austrian capital Vienna as a possible meeting place. But still any place in Europe is burdened with the problems of the separation of East and Westchristen. “Havana for a Meeting is ideal,“” said the Chairman of the society for the study of the Christian East, the Marburg Church historian Karl Pinggera, the German wave. A areligiöse government with, to say the least, from the West. And loyalty to Moscow.

Patriarch Cyril, the Primate of the Orthodox Church in Russia

“The Kremlin and the Church side by side”

“In Putin’s Russia are the Kremlin and the Church’s side against the West“ was the title of Rudolf Prokschi, Professor of the theology and history of the Christian East at the University of Vienna in a recent Nzz article. This is a “Alliance, such as it never before has given into the more than millennial history of the Russian Orthodoxy”. Under Putin was the Orthodoxy, almost like at the time of the absolutism again Church has become.

Prokschi sees the current encounter as a Surprise. Behind the Scenes of the Russian Orthodox Church competed with different points of view, to whom, as strong currents, it is also a strong distance to the West and to Rome belonged to, he told Deutsche Welle. But could the Orthodox side with the encounter try to self-reliance to show. Also Pinggera speaks with views of the Kremlin and the Church of “the incredible proximity to the state” – on the one hand. On the other hand, Patriarch Kirill, whose curriculum vitae the Staatsnähe show a certain degree of self-reliance quite be trusted.

The Vatican’s “Ecumenical Minister”, the Swiss Kurienkardinal Kurt Koch, left, during an Interview this week to answer the question of whether the Meeting in Havana, the Russian President’s help. But he said: “I think that Putin the Meeting agrees.” More he could not say. And Karl Pinggera, the scholar in Marburg, looks to the Russian classification of the meeting of Havana. “In Russia, as well as support of the Kremlin’s course.”

His itinerary crosses that of the patriarchs: Pope Francis

“A Real Genocide”

In the weather forecast having predicted a Statements came a very Realpolitik aspect to the language. Over the years, had the influential head of the Außenamts of the Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion, speculation about such a Meeting again and again with regard to serious differences of opinion is rejected. Now he led the situation in the Middle East and in Parts of Africa where extremists a “real genocide” of Christians committed. In the face of this tragic Situation had to be “internal dissent” to reset.

The name refers to the dramatic Situation in Syria with hundreds of thousands dead. Kirill blessed in the previous year, “the fight against terrorism” and thus Putin’s military action as a “Holy struggle“”. A line, which then, as now, certainly not by the Vatican is divided. Therefore, it is interesting how concrete the announced Declaration, the Pope and Patriarch at the airport in Havana to sign want.