Moscow Patriarchate Signals New Interest In Unity With Rome

Monday, May 17, 2010
By Paul Goble

A senior Russian hierarch close to Patriarch Kirill said in Rome last week that “the time has come to take decisive steps in the direction of full unity” between Russian Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church, the latest indication that Kirill wants at a minimum far closer ties with the Vatican than did any of his predecessors.

Speaking to a meeting of Orthodox and Catholic hierarchs and activists, Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk, the Patriarchal exarch of Belarus, said that the “commonality of views” of the two churches “on many questions” means that “the time has come to take decisive steps toward full unity.”

Filaret’s words were reported by the Vatican and reproduced in the Russian-language “Sibirskaya Katolicheskaya gazeta” which focused on his call for taking “joint steps toward unity” and reported as well that he hopes Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict XVI will meet soon (sibcatholic.ru/2010/05/07/nastalo-vremya-predprinyat-sovmestnye-shagi-k-edinstvu/).

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