Patriarch Kirill: 'powerful forces' opposed meeting with Pope [CWN]

[CWN_News]

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow says that “powerful forces” outside Russian Orthodox Church were opposed to his February 12 meeting with Pope Francis. The Russian …

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[Peter_J]

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow says that “powerful forces” outside Russian Orthodox Church were opposed to his February 12 meeting with Pope Francis.

I don’t have any special knowledge about whether that it is true or not; but I feel like someone should remind His Beatitude that there were many prior years when Catholics were eager for a Pope-Patriarch meeting and the Orthodox opposed it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I can certainly imagine this to be true. In the absence of knowing who they are, one can possibly guess without undue fear of being wrong.

On the patriarch’s side of it, there are surely Russian ultra-nationalist/ethnicist/caesaropapists who would just as soon see the patriarch dead as for him to depart even slightly from the "ROC=Russian identity=Russian imperialism formulation.

On the Pope’s side of it, one can imagine some of the modernists in the Church opposing the Pope’s meeting with a “moral reactionary”, which I would not doubt is the way they see Kirill.

It’s troubling to think about.

 

[Peter_J]

It’s troubling to think about.

Yes, I think it is. It would be one thing to oppose something in the Joint Statement that the Pope and Patriarch issued, but it’s quite another to oppose them meeting.