Church in the World

Europe?s bishops plot new course

Russia

The Catholic Bishops' Conferences of Europe (CCEE) met in Russia for the first time last week and elected a new presidency that gave important signals about the future direction of the Church in Europe. The meeting in St Petersburg was held on 4-8 October and was attended by the presidents of the 34 episcopal conferences that are members of the CCEE. The Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, became the new CCEE chairman, and French Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux et Bazes, was named as one of the vice-chairmen. Both bishops are widely seen as close to Pope Benedict XVI. The new presidency will be in place until 2011.

The decision to hold the conference on Russian soil has raised hopes for considerable rapprochement between the Russian Orthodox and the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict XVI made renewed dialogue with Moscow one of the priorities of his pontificate. The meeting was warmly welcomed by the Moscow Patriarchate as "another step in the development of cooperation between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches in the affirmation of Christian values, which are in high demand in the modern world". The small Russian Catholic community, amounting to 600,000 believers according to official figures, enjoys the "sincere respect" of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexis II said in his letter to the conference.

The warm Orthodox welcome of the Catholic synod in St Petersburg is another improvement in relations between the Vatican and Moscow boosted by renewed theological dialogue in Belgrade in late September (The Tablet, 7 October). After the St Petersburg conference Alexis II met Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, for private talks in Moscow. "It gives us anguish to realise that some Western Christians including Catholics failed to discern and recognise the incomparable spiritual richness of Holy Russia, and to appreciate and respect the religious and cultural heritage of the great Orthodox tradition," Cardinal Tettamanzi was quoted by Russia's Interfax news agency as saying.