www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Bishop Hilarion meets Pope, Speaks at Synod

Pope Francis has met with a leading Russian Orthodox prelate who, in a fiery address, urged the Synod of Bishops to battle secular ideology.

The meeting between the Pope and Metropolitan Hilarion, the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations, took place on October 21 in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

The patriarchate stated that the two discussed “bilateral relations of the Roman Catholic Church and the Moscow Patriarchate, as well as the situation in the Middle East, where Christians have been persecuted by the terrorist groups.”
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On 19 October 2015, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR), arrived in Rome with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia to attend as an observer from the Russian Orthodox Church the plenary session of the 14th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church on the “Vocation and Mission of the Family in the Church and in the Contemporary World.”
Metropolitan Hilarion was met at the airport by H.E. Alexander Avdeyev, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Holy See; archimandrite Antony (Sevryuk), secretary of the Administration of the Moscow Patriarchate’s parishes in Italy; Rev. Hyacinthe Destivelle of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; and Rev. Alexiy Dikarev of the DECR Secretariat for Inter-Christian Relations.

On October 20, at the Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City where the Synod holds its sessions, the plenary session chaired by Pope Francis opened with Metropolitan Hilarion’s greetings. Speaking about challenges and threats to the family in the contemporary world Metropolitan Hilarion underscored that the Christian Churches should “seek out answers to them, proceeding from the mission that Christ has placed upon them – to bring humanity to salvation” and regretted that certain communities, which call themselves Christian, distort the teaching on the family and marriage under the influence of the secular world and are prepared to abandon their Christian identity. Under the circumstances the position of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches which remain faithful to the traditional teaching on the family “should be ever more strengthened and unanimous. We should defend it jointly both within the framework of dialogue with the legislative and executive branches of power of various countries, as well as in the forums of international organizations to ensure by all means possible that the family is legally protected.”

Greeting Metropolitan Hilarion during the session were Pope Frances; Cardinal Pietro Parolin, State Secretary of the Holy See; Cardinal Bechara Al-Rai, Patriarch of the Maronite Church; Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family; other members of the Synod, as well as representatives of the Non-Catholic Churches and communities.

Attending the Synod’s sessions are observers from the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Moscow, Serbia and Romania, the Orthodox Church of Albania, the Coptic and Jacobite Syrian Churches, the Anglican Communion; the Lutheran World Federation, the World Methodist Council, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Baptist World Alliance and the World Evangelical Alliance.

The 14th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church will complete its work on October 25.

https://mospat.ru/en/2015/10/21/news123872/

You mean His Eminence, Met. Hilarion did not take the opportunity to lambaste the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church as he did at the Vatican not that long ago? What he did then was most distasteful and unChristian.

Evidently not! Now get over it!

Not so fast, Father!

Metropolitan Hilarion himself may not have said anything against the UGCC this time, but the department of which he is the chairman just did!

Read it for yourself: https://mospat.ru/en/2015/10/23/news123987/

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=12431

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/87064.htm

I think this is the problem:
The DECR points out that "cutting historical ecclesiastical ties between Moscow and ancient Kiev, "whence the land of the Rus' came into being," became the major slogan of the church schism formed in Ukraine in the early 1990s.

So patriarchal status denotes "cutting historical ecclesiastical ties?" Wow! What does this mean? Should not the SPIRITUAL bond of communion be enough? Should this not be the primary (if not only) "ecclesiastical tie" that matters?

It's also strange (to me, anyway) that the DECR would liken the Ukranian Church's claim to patriarchal status with "cutting ties" between the UGCC and Rome. IMO< whether the UGCC was a Patriarchate or a Major Archbishopric would not cut the (MUCH MORE) important spiritual ties between Rome and the UGCC that exist.

Blessings

Its a red herring...no pun intended. Moscow's core fear (both that of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government) is that Constantinople might recognize an Orthodox Patriarch of Kiev...

The recent fierce extension of the discredited (by some of us at least) pan-slavist "Russky mir" vision was resurrected by the post communist Russian secularists as a replacement ideology for Marxist Leninism and the Church willingly partnered up. The problem with pan-slavism has always been, and it remains to the present date, that it really requires all of the East Slavs and even the South slavs to accept the concept in terms as defined by Russians. It was envisioned in the mid nineteenth century as the Ottoman world was teetering and nationalistic movements swept central and northern Europe as a 'modern' Slavic (but Russian controlled) version of the Hanseatic League to serve as a bulwark for continued Tsarist relevance. Well, the Tsardom became irrelevant in 1917.

I think that in the end, an uneasy status quo will continue within the Orthodox world after the 2016 Synod, as whatever disagreements exist are not based on matters of faith, dogma or doctrine, but rather on geopolitics. In my view, neither the Patriarchates of Constantinople nor Moscow are likely to want to be viewed by history as being responsible for what might result in a long lasting schism over matters of geopolitics. But anything is possible if enough miscalculations are made by all sides with a stake in the outcome.

So as has been the case off and on (mostly on) for the last four centuries or so, the Greek Catholics become the strawman and whipping boy for this mess.