Representative of the Moscow Patriarchate: No issue of union of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Church

An important contribution to the normalization of relations between Orthodox and Roman Catholics, characterizes the recent statement – “apology” to the Orthodox of Pope Francis, made a few days ago in the presence of Archbishop Jerome, however “there is no mention of union of the two Churches, “, but also not on an informal level,” said Hilarion, Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of Foreign Ecclesiastical Relations.

According to the Russian hierarch, who is even preparing to go to the Vatican for festive wishes and talks on the last ten days of December, “no one talks about the union of the two Churches, because the divisions have existed for a long time, many contradictions have accumulated. have been living independently for almost ten centuries “, there are fundamental dogmatic differences, therefore, there is no talk of union, but there can be talk of finally ending that state of rivalry, of competition, of hostility, which has existed in the past. of many centuries “.

The “ecclesiastical diplomacy” of the Moscow Patriarchate told the Russian satellite network “Russia 24” that it was anything but the first apology “for the numerous mistakes made by the Roman Catholics against the Orthodox” on behalf of a Pontiff. highlighting as such errors “the violence, which at times was exercised against the Orthodox population, as well as the creation of the union, which to this day operates divisively” and deceives the faithful, “because many Orthodox, when they became unionists, did not even suspect that they had converted. , because externally everything remained as it was before: the ecclesiastical attire is the same, the prayers during the Liturgy are the same, the ecclesiastical psalms are the same “.

When Moscow Patriarch Cyril met with Pope Francis in Havana in 2016, the Russian hierarch recalled, they had made a “very important” joint statement, which directly stated that “union is not a method to achieve unity.”

Speaking on the same network, Metropolitan Volokolamsk said that the Russian Church could not help but worry about the “anti-Russian propaganda of foreign origin, which is developing in Ukraine”, as the country is developing into an “apple of discord” between the US and Russia, but welcomed the recent teleconference of Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, assessing that “constructive relations between Russia and the United States are necessary for the security of the whole world.”

Source: AMPE

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Source From: Capital

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