ROME (CNS): The head of ecumenical relations for the Russian Orthodox Church has described relations with the Roman Catholic Church as being in a state of “cold war”.
A visit by Pope John Paul II to the “canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church”, including Ukraine, would not be appropriate when relations are so strained, said Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, and chairman of the Church’s department for external Church relations.
An interview with Metropolitan Kirill was published on February 14 by the Russian newspaper Novye Izvestia and reported widely in Italian newspapers.
Pope John Paul is scheduled to visit Ukraine from June 23-27. Officials of the Russian Orthodox Church and members of its hierarchy in Ukraine have asked the Pope to postpone his visit. Members of the two other Orthodox Churches in Ukraine have not opposed the trip.
Meanwhile, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow told the newspaper Sevodnya on February 15 that the Catholic Church was trying to spread throughout the former Soviet Union and win converts from Orthodoxy.
Catholics are evangelising in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan, he said.
“At the same time, in Western Ukraine, they have seized churches and deprived Orthodox believers of the right to fulfil their religious needs.”
