Top-level ecumenical consultations headed by the President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch and Metro-politan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Patriarchate of Moscow’s head of foreign relations, on how to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East, took place in Vienna on Monday at the invitation of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.
The consultations coincided with celebrations marking two years since the historic 12 February 2016 meeting in Havana between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. The celebrations began with a concert of Russian church music in the Vienna Konzerthaus. Among the works performed by the Great State Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra Choir was Metropolitan Hilarion’s Stabat Mater.
At a reception after the concert, addressing the central task of the consultations, Hilarion asked: “How we can help the persecuted Christians in the Near East?”
One reason why Kirill had decided that the time was ripe for a meeting with the Pope two years ago had been the plight of Christians in the Middle East, Cardinal Koch noted. Christians were indispensable to peace and stability in the region, he said, and were being persecuted, regardless of denomination, merely because they were Christian. This “ecumenical martyrdom” ought to bring the Churches closer to one another, he said.
Hilarion pointed out that besides Patriarch Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian state was also concerned about Christians in the Middle East. As well as sending humanitarian aid, the Moscow Patriarchate above all wanted to help restore church life in Syria. In January, an interreligious delegation had distributed 77 tons of aid to families in Syria. It had worked with Syrian Christians and Muslim clerics and the aid was paid for by Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Armenian Apostolic churches and mosque communities in Russia. The first volume of an illustrated catalogue on the damaged or destroyed churches and monasteries in Syria by a joint Catholic-Orthodox team of experts was also presented.
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