Will the downturn in Western relations with Russia have an impact on Catholic-Orthodox ties? Not at all, according to Moscow’s Patriarch Kirill, who talked by telephone with Pope Francis last Saturday and insisted that both had agreed to continue dialogue.
But with Russian Church leaders appearing to bless President Vladimir Putin’s every move, questions are certain to be posed about the new approaches heralded by Francis’s historic encounter with Kirill in February 2016, and whether these aren’t merely being exploited for propaganda purposes.
Putin’s landslide re-election on March 18, amid reports of ballot-stuffing and intimidation, was cautiously received by Russia’s Catholic bishops’ conference. Its chairman, Bishop Clemens Pickel, told the president that the small Catholic minority prayed he would “justify the confidence of voters”.
But Putin’s victory was glowingly welcomed by Kirill, who congratulated the president on his “convincing victory in open and fair conditions”, adding that voters had backed his vision for “preserving and multiplying the nation’s spiritual, moral and cultural values”.
Since then, the Orthodox closeness to the regime has been underlined by reactions to the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury, with the Patriarch’s foreign relations director, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, dismissing British claims of Moscow’s involvement as “nonsense” and a deliberate provocation “aimed at discrediting Russia”.
The Russian Church’s stance is understandable. During Putin’s 18 years in power, its wealth and supremacy in national life have been buttressed by laws and regulations, while Orthodox leaders have shown their gratitude by giving a religious underpinning to Putin’s authoritarian rule, and backing the rebuilding of Russian power at the expense of neighbouring states.
Not a word has been uttered questioning the forcible annexation of Crimea or Russian involvement in the savage four-year war in eastern Ukraine, which has left more than 10,000 dead and 25,000 wounded.
Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church has accepted the use of state power to restrict or suppress religious rivals, from much-harassed Baptist and Greek Catholic communities to the now-outlawed Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As for criticising regime policies, Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s church and society department, insisted last week that this would never happen. Opposing the authorities wasn’t characteristic of Orthodox believers, Legoyda assured the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily.
All of this should weigh heavily on the Vatican and Catholic Church.
During their Havana talks two years ago, the Pope and Kirill agreed in a 30-point declaration on the need to defend Christian communities in the Middle East and embattled Christian values in Western societies – priorities reiterated last August when the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, travelled to Moscow.
Cardinal Parolin’s visit was preceded by a flurry of celebratory contacts, and there were hints that Putin’s government might liberalise visas for visiting Catholic clergy and even arrange the return of some seized Catholic churches. In response, the cardinal lauded “the path of mutual rapprochement, brotherhood and cooperation” begun by Francis and Kirill.
But his top-level foray sparked fresh anxieties among Russia’s own Catholics, whose Church is not officially recognised and which still faces discrimination and hardship. “Russians understand the importance of relations with the Holy See,” the Catholic Church’s spokesman, Mgr Igor Kovalevsky, conceded bitterly at the time, “but in any dialogue, the local community dimension must be considered as well, not just top-level political and diplomatic questions.”
In reality, little if anything has changed for Catholics in Russia. Nor, despite ostentatious pledges, are Russian Orthodox leaders doing anything in practice to help Middle Eastern Christians.
As for upholding Christian values, these values do not appear, in the Russian lexicon, to have much to do with democracy and human rights, or with religious freedom and national sovereignty. In some quarters, this is already being acknowledged. Poland’s Catholic bishops initiated contacts with the Russian Church to much fanfare in 2012, but have now suspended them, concluding that goodwill declarations had no impact on Russian behaviour.
Joint prayers for peace will always have value. But whether the Catholic Church can go much beyond prayer without degrading its own values is open to question.
Jonathan Luxmoore covers Church news from Warsaw and Oxford
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