Pope Francis met Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in Havana – the first time that the Bishop of Rome has met the head of the Russian church. Cuban President Raúl Castro hosted the meeting, which took place during the Russian leader’s visit to Russian Orthodox communities on the island. The meeting came at a time of Russian-Western tension over Ukraine and Syria, and was met with apprehension by Ukrainian Catholics.
What the British media are saying
The Guardian reported the Pope’s words upon embracing the Patriarch: “Finally! We are brothers.” But hanging over the meeting was the implication that President Putin was using his clerical ally to win support in the west. “According to analyst Alexei Makarkin, the only reason the Patriarch agreed to the meeting was because Putin wanted him to,” the paper reported. “The main topic of the discussion – persecution of Christians in the Middle East – plays to the Russian president’s advantage,” he said. Russia Today, the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, quoted a Catholic saying, “If people can come together who’ve been separated for 1,000 years with hostility, even though they believe the same thing – more or less – this is a message that the world is changing, there is hope.”
What the Vaticanisti are saying
At Crux, John Allen urged caution, stating “It was a priceless show of goodwill at a time when religion too often seems a source of conflict and violence,” and “also a sign of hope for the embattled Christians of the Middle East, since Francis and Kirill agreed that protecting them will be a joint priority.” However, he wrote, Moscow’s motives “were open to serious doubt” and that Orthodox hostility towards Catholicism was unlikely to change. Patriarch Kirill, he concluded, got more out of the meeting than Francis. Vatican Radio was more optimistic: “Just days after the meeting the Vatican’s Apostolic Nuncio to Moscow, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, told Vatican Radio that he hopes this meeting is the first of many to come.”
The most overlooked story of the week
✣Turkey reinstates its ambassador to the Vatican
What happened?
Marie Collins, a lay member of Pope Francis’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, has criticised those at the “top level” of the Curia “who worry more about their own fiefdoms and the threat of change than they do about the work the commission is trying to do to protect children”.
Why was it under-reported?
The lack of attention given to the story is surprising, considering it comes after similar complaints by fellow survivor Peter Saunders, and the film Spotlight, which recounts the cover up of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston, US. It could be an extention of the Francis effect, the liberal reformer who could do no wrong, even when in this case it is the Curia being criticised, rather than the Pope. Instead the media have focused this week on a decades-old story about a previous pope’s friendship with a married woman.
What will happen next?
Pope Francis has not progressed as quickly as he might wish in his reform of the Curia, the bureaucratic body that runs the Church through its many departments. He is clearly strongly behind the work of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which he set up in March 2014. Could the Curia’s resistance to the reforms proposed by the commission – Mrs Collins described it as a “brick wall” – be the trigger for Francis finally to make his move against those protecting their “fiefdoms”?
✣The Week Ahead
On Tuesday, the feast of the Chair of St Peter, the Pope will hold a jubilee audience with members of the Roman Curia, the Vatican Governatorate, and other institutions linked to the Holy See. The event is part of the Year of Mercy, which began in December. In his most famous address to Vatican officials Pope Francis listed 15 ailments of the Curia.
Bishop Richard Moth of Arundel and Brighton will hear Confessions on Saturday morning at Arundel Cathedral to mark the Year of Mercy. The day has been dubbed an “All-day Year of Mercy” by the diocese.
A crunch meeting between David Cameron and European leaders in Brussels is scheduled for Friday. The PM has tried to secure a better deal for Europe ahead of the referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU. The Church is yet to make a statement on the vote, although Vatican “foreign minister” Archbishop Gallagher has said Britain should remain.
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