Not a church, not a monastery, not an apostolic palace or a patriarchal curia. Pope Francis and Russia’s Patriarch Kirill are to meet in a room at Havana’s international airport. But, as Alexander Shchipkov, one of Kirill’s closest collaborators pointed out, “the airport is a symbolic crossroads. And when people meet at a crossroads, their encounters are brief, yet sincere and profound”. At a crossroads, people tend to speak “frankly” about “the things of greatest importance”.
Christian unity – and not only – finds itself at a unique and promising crossroads with the meeting between the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Moscow in Cuba. Already, the preparations ahead of the meeting are laden with signs and implications that are truly telling. These signs disprove the conjectures being made about the meeting being merely a question of ecclesiastical “high politics”.
No preconditions
Pope Francis has not laid down any preconditions for his meeting with Kirill whom he is eager to embrace. “I told him (Kirill, Ed.): I’ll go wherever you want. You call me and I’ll go.” These were the Pope’s very words on board the flight from Istanbul to Rome on 30 November 2014. Pope Francis agreed with Moscow’s proposals with regard to the place and set-up of the meeting as well as with the contents of the joint declaration the two are going to be signing. Judging from the remarks made by the Dominican priest Hyacinthe Destivelle of the Pontifical Council Promoting Christian Unity, the text includes references to themes and key points that have been the focus of public and “political” speeches made by prominent representatives of Moscow’s Patriarchate: concerns about secularisation, weakened ethical principles in the modern age, defence of life, the family and heterosexual marriage, denunciation of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.
In recent years, official spokespersons of the Russian Orthodox Church have repeatedly condemned the “moral decline” in the West, which they link to the legalisation of same-sex cohabitation, presenting ethical battles as a basis for the “alliance” with the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, the insistence of Russian Orthodox leaders on the importance of defending Christians in Arab countries, has been in tune with Putin’s policy on the Middle East. Putin has claimed the almost neo-Tsarist role of protector of Eastern Christians.
On its part, the Apostolic See in Rome has not proclaimed any anti-modern homophobia-tinged crusade although homophobic sentiment is present in some of the speeches pronounced by leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. As far as the Middle East is concerned, in response to the inclination of certain Western circles to hail Putin and Russia as saviours, the Holy See put a more realistic perspective on things.
In Pope Francis’ preaching, however, there is no talk of “holy war” over the martyrdom of Middle Eastern Christians as there is in the language adopted by representatives of the Patriarchate of Moscow, blessing the Russian bombs dropped as a deterrent to jihadist “Evil”.
The joint declaration will attest the fact that the meeting in Cuba took place but it should not be blown out of proportion and seen as the key to interpreting the event. Pope Francis did not hesitate in agreeing to sign a text put together by Moscow, if it facilitated the circumstances of his embrace with Patriarch Kirill. He is interested in the actual meeting and what can come of it. All else – the country chosen for the meeting, the unusual venue and the joint declaration – is of secondary importance.
Towards achieving full unity
The Bishop of Rome has made his intentions with regard to relations with his Orthodox brothers very clear on a number of occasions. Speaking before Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Fanar on 30 November 2014, Pope Francis said that in order to achieve full unity with Orthodox Christians, “the Catholic Church does not intend to impose any conditions except that of the shared profession of faith”. Last year too, in the message sent to the Ecumenical Patriarch for the Feast of St. Andrew’s the Pope repeated that “there is no longer any impediment to Eucharistic communion which cannot be overcome through prayer, the purification of hearts, dialogue and the affirmation of truth”.
The direction Christians are called to move in, is that of full sacramental unity, it is not simply about forging “holy alliances” against common enemies. Just by walking together – this is the way Pope Francis sees it – hostilities and misunderstanding will fade away and sooner or later Catholics and Orthodox will realise they are already united. “Unity will not come about as a miracle at the very end. Rather, unity comes about in journeying; the Holy Spirit does this on the journey… But it will happen on this journey, in each step we take. And it is not we who are doing this, but rather the Holy Spirit, who sees our goodwill.
The Ut unum sint encyclical in practice
To ease the process along, Pope Francis’s “exercise of the Petrine ministry” is about actions more than words, one that is “open to a new situation”, which Wojtyla referred to in his Ut unum sint encyclical as an ecumenical turning point required in the present time, following the Second Vatican Council. The current successor of Peter does not impose his own ways of thinking, he lets go of all theological preconditions and any claims to jurisdictional supremacy over the Primates of the Eastern Churches. The use of tactics to “manage” the differences and rivalries between the various parts of the Orthodox world seems to have been scrapped too. The Roman Catholic Church has given up on any form of imaginary “two-oven politics” as a response to the chronic dualism between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the “mother Church” of Constantinople: Pope Francis hastened to write to his “Brother Bartholomew” to inform him about his meeting with “brother Kirill”, days before the official announcement. The Bishop of Rome adopted the same attitude towards all heads of Eastern Churches, regardless of the political weight they carried, in keeping with that synodal ecclesiology the Argentinian Pope is trying to endorse in the Catholic Church too. In Pope Francis’ eyes, his growing network of friendships with heads of other Churches in not about power relations: his meeting with Kirill, for example, is not so much a meeting with the leader of Orthodoxy’s largest community, but an embrace with the head of a Church of saints and martyrs, who safeguarded the faith during decades of forced atheism, giving all Christianity gems of faith and spirituality of inestimable value. Now, despite certain ambiguities and obscurities, this faith and spirituality is blossoming again, which must come as good news for the Bishop of Rome as well as all other Christians.
The time and space of unity
Pope Francis embraces his Orthodox brothers just as they are, with their limitations, their assets, their conflicts and inclinations which are not always in tune. He doesn’t have a “line” he wishes to impose. He is well aware of the fact that unity will not come as a result of doctrinal negotiations but he nevertheless encourages the theological dialogue Ioannis Zizioulas is so fond of - Zizioulas is the Metropolitan of the ecumenical patriarchate the Russians do not feel very warm towards and a man Francis has defined “the greatest living Christian theologian”. He is also well aware of the fact that unity between Christians cannot be boiled down to a neo-rigorist “alliance” against modernity. Nevertheless, he shares much of what Russian Orthodox leaders have to say about the negative effects of secularisation. According to Francis, unity with his brothers in Christ does not equate to standardisation but “reconciled diversity” brought about by the Holy Spirit, to be discovered along the way. This is partly the purpose of the meeting in Cuba, which has avoided the self-fulfilling celebratory mega event formula: for him, the important thing is to meet Kirill and walk alongside each other looking to the future. Everything else is secondary: the meeting set-up, the protocol, the set phrases, even the place. A Cuban airport is as good as any other place. Because the Bergoglian principle of time being superior to space applies to Christian unity too. As does the importance of “setting processes in motion rather than occupying spaces”.
