Moscow, Russia, Aug 23, 2017 / 12:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After a joint meeting during Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s visit to Russia this week, both he and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill said the trip marks “a new stage” in relations between their Churches.
This stage, they said, is thanks not only to Pope Francis’ meeting with Patriarch Kirill in Havana in February 2016, but is also due to the loaning of the relics of St. Nicholas to Russia over the summer, drawing millions of Orthodox faithful for veneration.
Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, was welcomed to Patriarch Kirill’s residence at the monastery of St. Daniel Aug. 22, where the two met as part of Cardinal Parolin’s Aug. 21-24 visit to Moscow.
Taking place 18 months after meeting between Francis and Patriarch Kirill, Parolin’s visit marks the first time a Vatican Secretary of State has traveled to Moscow in 18 years.
According to an Aug. 23 statement from the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, at the beginning of the meeting Patriarch Kirill said the meeting between he and Cardinal Parolin was possible due to “the development of relations between the Russian Federation and the Holy See.”
“But it is with still greater satisfaction that I see the development of relations between our Churches,” he said, noting that his meeting with Pope Francis provided new impetus for cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church.
“This fact testifies that a new stage has indeed begun in our relations with events of great importance, which have been possible because in Havana we agreed our positions on many current issues,” he said, adding that “this communion of positions allows us to build plans and give them real content.”
Cardinal Parolin echoed the sentiment, offering Pope Francis’ greeting to “my brother Kirill,” and affirming the patriarch’s observation that the Havana encounter “has laid the foundation for a new stage in the relationship between our Churches, giving new impetus to these relations,” according to Vatican Radio.
A key highlight of the conversation between the two was the transfer of the relics of St. Nicholas of Bari, one of the most revered saints in the Russian Orthodox Church, to Moscow earlier this summer.
Consisting of several fragments of his ribs, the relics were flown on a chartered plane to Moscow, where they stayed in the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior from May 22-July 12 before going to St. Petersburg from July 13-28, marking the first time in nearly 1,000 years that the relics of the 4th century saint had been moved from their resting place in Bari.
Calling the visit of the relics an “exceptional event for the story of our Churches,” Cardinal Parolin said the event is an example of “the ecumenism of sanctity, it’s true, it exists.”
“The saints unite us because they are close to God and so it is they who help us to overcome the difficulties of past relations due to previous situations, and to always walk more rapidly toward fraternal embrace and Eucharistic communion,” he said.
According to the statement from the patriarchate, more than 2.3 million Orthodox faithful from all over Russia cued up to venerate the relics, at times waiting 6-10 hours to get in. Many elderly and sick also came, and were able to skip the long lines.
Patriarch Kirill noted that when they waived goodbye to the relics, he told his faithful that “neither ecclesiastical diplomacy nor government diplomacy could do as much for the development of relations between the Catholic world and the Orthodox world as what St. Nicholas did.”
St Nicholas, he said, “has entered into the history of relations between our Churches as a particularly brilliant and luminous page. It is a spiritual consequence of our meeting in Havana.”
As with prior meetings Cardinal Parolin had this week, other key talking points between the two were conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the need to seek peaceful solutions while working together to provide humanitarian aid.
On the crisis in Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill stressed that the Church “can play no other role than that of pacification when people are in conflict with each other,” and voiced gratitude for the fact that “our Churches share much the same position on the role of the Church in the conflict in Ukraine.”
Cardinal Parolin voiced much the same point of view in his meeting with Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, President of the Department for External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, the day before.
In his comments, Patriarch Kirill noted that “conflicts do not last forever and sooner or later they end,” but questioned that “if all social efforts are involved in the conflict, then who will pick up the stones?”
“I appreciate very much the fact that once again we have found mutual understanding on the role that our Churches must play in the reconciliation of the population in Ukraine,” he said.
When it comes to the Middle East, mention was made of the agreement the two Churches found on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa during last year’s meeting in Havana.
“The collaboration between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church in providing humanitarian assistance to the populations suffering due to conflicts in the Middle East can be an important factor of unity,” Patriarch Kirill said, adding that cooperation in providing aid can provide a basis for common projects in the Middle East in the future.
Following his meeting with the patriarch, Cardinal Parolin visited Putin at the presidential residence in Sochi, nearly 900 miles southwest of Saratov.
During their hour-long meeting “carried out in a positive and cordial climate, one of respect and listening to each other,” they had an “open exchange of views on various subject matters relating to international and bilateral relations,” according to a statement from the Holy See press office.
They exchanged gifts, with Cardinal Parolin giving the Russian president a bronze olive branch as a symbol of peace, and Putin giving the Vatican secretary of state a set of collector coins commemorating the 2014 Olympics, which were held in Sochi.
Cardinal Parolin is travelling back to Moscow, where he will say a private Mass at the nunciature Aug. 24 before his return to Rome.
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When Pope Francis was asked if he would approve a female diaconate, he replied, and signaled (?): “If it is deacons with holy orders, no.”
And what purpose or foreseeable (!) consequence of crypto-deaconesses who are not ordained?
In the secular domain, gradualist accommodation is what gave us “civil unions,” not as the endgame but as the halfway house to “gay marriage.” So, within the Church, instead of the oxymoron gay marriage (now crypto-blessed as “couples”), we’ll surely get non-ordination of deaconesses—BUT with a different redefinition and a special “mission”? Not a linear half-way house, but a niche?
Their non-ordained NICHE—perhaps under archdeaconess Jeannine Gramick and the coupled photo-op James Martin—will it be to “informally, non-liturgically and spontaneously” administer crypto-blessings to irregular “couples”?
This controversial and divisive role OFFLOADED from the ordained priesthood? And, resulting in a parallel church-within-a-Church? As a local option, of course, and within a polyhedral Church! Very synodal. And, almost Islamic—a gay “dhimmi” within the big-tent and formerly coherent Catholic Church. Universal disunity as a Fernandezian accommodation of der Synodal Weg…Hegelian ideology in action, masquerading as a development of doctrine…
SUMMARY: the German Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel smiles—thesis, antithesis, and synthesis!!!
Everytime y’all bleatqbout young women exiting the church in droves, remember this.
Without ordained women y’all are nailing your own coffin shut. If driving women away from the church is your end game, congratulations you’re doing a smash up job!!! 🥳
Once the women all leave, the men won’t be too far behind. But it seems that’s what all of the old Catholics want – no future for their children or grandchildren.
“Without ordained women y’all are nailing your own coffin shut.”
Not true. In fact, quite false.
Exhibit A: “The Church of England has lost a fifth of people between 2019 and 2022, and over 40% of regular worshippers since the year 2000.”
Exhibit B: “In February 2022, the Vatican released statistics showing that in 2020 the number of Catholics in the world increased by 16 million to 1.36 billion. That means that 17.7% of the world’s population is Catholic.”
Exhibit C: “The topline numbers continue to show a church experiencing gradual long-term membership decline, much like other mainline Protestant denominations. The Episcopal Church’s tally of baptized members dropped just below 1.6 million in 2022, down 21% from 2013.”
Exhibit D: “Statistically, is Africa the fastest-growing continent when it comes to Catholicism? According to figures released by the Vatican in October last year covering the year 2021, Africa has 256 million Catholics, representing about 18% of the continent’s population. That is 5.2 million more than in 2020.”
Try again.
What church that ordains females are young women flocking to today? Every woman-ordaining mainline denomination I know of is diminishing in numbers.
If the Catholic Church looked at that as a business model, it certainly wouldn’t be one to follow. It’s a path to extinction.
Steph:
Churches with priestesses have all declined earlier and faster than the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, indicating that you are mistaken.
As one formerly Protestant woman remarked, after converting to the Catholic faith: “the purpose of priestesses is to sacramentalize abortion.”
Stop with you radical feminism, “Steph”. Your Antifa Catholicism has done the Church grave harm already.
Cardinal Schönborn said he was “deeply convinced.” Whew! His feelings could have gone either way. How nice that his Eminence has emotionally embraced this teaching of Christ!
All of this makes me want to sing the sycophant song of Cardinal Tagle:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/07/20/ultramontanism-redivivus/
I have enormous sympathy for your point of view. I am not in favour of women priests but I do take your.point about driving women away. There is so much wrong with the church at this moment. The priesthood feels riddled with gayness the Pope regularly talks out of both sides of his mouth, he uses gutter language. He has gone out of his way to heap.praise on a book extolling the gay life. Abuse victims seek justice and do not find it. Abusers seem to be lauded. Genuinely the issue of women priests is not top billing.
Steph, You should learn about the thousands of young women who love the Church and work in many evangelizeing ministeries and who are embracing religious vocations. They are a testament to joyful love of Christ and His Church.
For Heaven’s sake, dear Fathers: spell it out!
The Mass is the Sacrifice of the New Adam for the New Eve! It is a foretaste of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb! It’s marital, nuptial!
“Impossible.” I like the firmness and clarity of that word. Nice to see cardinals with a spine standing up for the truth.