Mixed reactions to historic meeting

Government and Orthodox Church leaders in Russia have welcomed the Pope’s historic 12 February meeting with Patriarch Kirill, although the joint declaration they signed at Havana airport was criticised as a “betrayal” by the head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, write Jonathan Luxmoore and Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

“This was a unique encounter,  in what’s known about its results and in terms of its symbolism,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Putin, said on Monday. “It achieved unanimity on the protection of Christian interests worldwide.” It was the first ever meeting between a pope and a Russian Orthodox patriarch.

The 30-point joint declaration urged international action to prevent the expulsion of Christians from the Middle East and deplored the “grave threat to religious freedom” in Europe’s “secularised societies”, as well as dangers posed by cohabitation, same-sex unions, abortion, euthanasia and biomedical technology. However, the document’s references to Ukraine were deplored by the head of the country’s Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev-Halych, who said its “half-truth nature” had left many Ukrainians feeling “betrayed by the Vatican”, and suspicious that Rome was “indirectly supporting Russian aggression”.

The declaration deplored the “deep economic and humanitarian crisis” caused by the war in Ukraine, but said nothing about Russian backing for separatist campaigns in Donetsk and Luhansk. The papal nuncio in Ukraine Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti said: “I ask you to be patient. Not always can all parties say what they want to say. Sometimes it is necessary to find a compromise ... What people will remember is their embrace, and the embrace is a holy thing.”

Concern for Christians in the Middle East who are being threatened with extinction was the main reason for the meeting, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said. “None of the major powers, neither the Americans nor the Europeans, are paying any attention to what is happening to the Christians in the Middle East,” he said on Austrian state TV.