Church in the World

Basilica to commemorate crash victims

Europe

A new basilica is to be built in Irkutsk, Siberia, at the spot where a Tu-154 airliner crashed two weeks ago. This was announced by the Orthodox Bishop Vadim of Irkutsk on 5 July.

This will not be the first ecclesiastical building in Irkutsk on the site of an air-crash, writes Vera Rich. In 1998, an An-124 aircraft crashed on to a residential block, killing more than 70 people; the following year a memorial chapel was erected on the site. |snip!|Russian Orthodox warn of new schism. A spokesman for the Patriarchate of Moscow has warned that the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, is bringing the Orthodox world to the brink of a schism identical to that in 1054, the date generally accorded to the great schism which divided Christianity into Western and Eastern branches.

Fr Nikolai Balashov, the priest in charge of ecumenical affairs in the Moscow Patriarchate, said tensions within Orthodoxy originated from the situation in Ukraine, where three different groups were contending for supremacy. The Moscow Patriarchate, which is closely linked with one of these groups, claims that the other two, the Kiev Patriarchate led by Metropolitan Filaret and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church led by Metropolitan Mefody, are schismatic. But the Ecumenical Patriarch, who is first among equals of Orthodox patriarchs, is now talking to representatives of these groups, which are planning to merge and gain recognition from Constantinople of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Fr Balashov argued that if Constantinople were to recognise an Orthodox Church in Ukraine independent of Moscow there could be 'grave consequences, not only for Ukraine but for the universal Church'. He said that the Pope?s trip to Ukraine at the end of June had strained relations with the Moscow Patriarchate, and his greeting Metropolitan Filaret had widened 'the chasm that divides us'. But he asserted that the dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox 'is too important for everyone concerned' to be halted, 'despite the cooling of these last few days'.