Pope Francis meets Russian President Vladimir Putin during a private meeting at Vatican City in 2015. Has the way been paved for the first visit of a pope to Moscow? asks Msgr. Pedro Lopez-Gallo.
As soon as the Berlin Wall was destroyed and Mikhail Gorbachev declared an end to the Bolshevik system, Vladimir Putin tried to open friendly relations with the Vatican. Full diplomatic relations between Moscow and the Vatican were only restored in 2009.
On Aug. 20, 2017, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, went to Moscow to meet the Russian president and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Putin went to Rome to meet Francis for the first time shortly after the Argentinian Pope was elected in 2013. He had already met his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. For the leader of the Kremlin, a visible relationship with the Vatican is an opportunity to highlight Russia’s effort to portray itself as a bulwark of morality and traditional values in contrast to an increasingly secularized Europe. He is clearly happy to expose himself to the media, especially in the liturgical ceremonies of the baroque cathedrals of Moscow with the Orthodox Patriarch and the Russian clergy.
Knowing Putin’s personality, Francis wrote an open letter to him to express his opposition to U.S. military intervention in Syria. In that letter, the Pope asked Putin to pray for him, and it seems that Putin was “touched” by this line. The request – unusual for a diplomatic letter – was a recognition of the Christian identity Putin has assiduously cultivated. Putin no doubt also appreciated the Pope’s message that the Kremlin was one of the more vocal critics of U.S. military action in Syria.
Like President Donald Trump, Francis faces criticism from his base over his Russian policy, but the Pope is happy to frequent the secular world and the belligerent Putin is finding a new friend in a man of peace, Pope Francis, who, in February 2016, met with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Havana, Cuba.
This was the first meeting between a Moscow patriarch and a pope since the Eastern Orthodox Church broke away from Rome in 1054. The meeting took almost 20 years of preparation and resulted in a joint declaration: “Now things are easier” said the Russian Patriarch; “It’s clearer that this is God’s will,” replied the Argentine Pope.
This encounter motivated the Russian conservatives to proclaim and even resurrect the czarist rhetoric of Moscow as the “third Rome,” a centre for imperial Christianity – the second being Constantinople, to which the Emperor Constantine had transferred imperial power. Photos of Francis and Kirill may buttress the Russian president’s attempts to present Russia as a stronghold of Christianity working to save a corrupted Western civilization from globalization without values, but it has sparked a debate in the Catholic world about whether Russia can indeed provide such a solution.
For the Roman Catholic Church, tighter ties with Moscow are an opportunity to re-establish a stronger presence after a century marked by the rise and fall of communism and enforced atheism. Officially, freedom of religion is enshrined in the Russian constitution, but that hasn’t stopped the government from making things difficult for religions other than the Orthodox Church. At the start of the new century, tensions rose and a few priests and bishops were kicked out of the country after being accused of proselytism by the Orthodox Church and it was only in 2009 that diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Russia were reinstated.
While some media pundits speculate that Vatican Secretary of State Parolin’s trip has paved the way for what would be the first-ever visit of a Catholic pope to Moscow, and such a move would be in line with the Pope’s desire “to unify Christians,” most analysts believe Orthodox opposition makes that eventuality remote.
One area of tension could be Russian aggression in Ukraine, on which Francis has come under fire for having taken a soft stance. Many Catholics charge him and the Vatican with excessive “ecumenical correctness,” insisting that he should be more outspoken on Ukraine.
Francis has called the conflict “fratricidal war,” laying blame on both sides – angering Greek Catholics who live in Ukraine. Their Major Archbishop, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, was quoted as saying that “many contacted me and said that they feel betrayed by the Vatican.”
Despite the enormous efforts of the Holy See to realize the desire of Jesus “ut omnes unum sint” (“that all will be one”), Orthodoxy is facing its Brexit moment since a Pan-Orthodox Council that aims to affirm unity risks pushing national churches further apart.
On June 16, 2016, the Pan-Orthodox Council gathered the 14 independent churches of the Eastern Orthodox Christian communion. There are an estimated 225-300 million Orthodox Christian worldwide but each one has divergencies that their theologians are not able to resolve. The theological debates between and within the churches are significant to the point that some question the legitimate essence of the Catholic Church or accuse her orthodoxy as a pure heresy. The Russian church has said that the council cannot go ahead without a preliminary meeting to amend all their discrepancies.