BY
The Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions split almost one thousand years
ago — before anyone in Cuba knew about Christianity, before anyone in Europe
knew about Cuba, and before Russia, let alone a distinct Russian Orthodox
Church, existed.
But on Friday afternoon, an unlikely scene unfolded at José Martí
International Airport in Havana: #Pope_Francis and #Patriarch_Kirill, respective
heads of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, embraced and kissed,
and met for two hours before issuing a 30-point joint statement focused on Christianity’s future in Europe, the plight of
Christians in the Middle East, and the two Churches’ divisive history in
Ukraine.
Why Cuba? In part because the Caribbean island serves as neutral ground for
the two churches, owing to both its strong Catholic ties and the tight bond it
forged with Moscow during the Soviet era. But the country, which recently
renewed relations with the United States, also serves as an example of the
expanded role Pope Francis has assumed in matters of international diplomacy.
(Francis played a crucial role in the Cuba-U.S. rapprochement, hosting secret talks between the two countries at the Vatican.)
So
it’s a fitting location for another rapprochement, one that has as much to do
with geopolitics as it does with religious doctrine, and with two places in
particular: the Middle East and Ukraine.
At the top of the list: Both Moscow and Rome have voiced their concerns
over the plight of Christians living in Iraq and Syria. When the meeting
between Francis and Kirill was announced, Metropolitan Illarion, the foreign
policy chief of the Russian Orthodox Church (a post Kirill himself once held), told reporters
that “the situation in the Middle East, in northern and central Africa, and in
other regions where extremists are perpetrating a genocide of Christians,
requires immediate action and an even closer cooperation between Christian
churches.”
Whether Christians in the region are in fact facing genocide is a matter of dispute in policy circles, from Baghdad to Washington,
but both the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches agree on the matter.
According to Open Doors USA, a Christian advocacy organization, 7,100 Christians
were killed in 2015 for “faith-related reasons,” disproportionately in the
Middle East and North Africa — 3,000 more people than the previous year.
However, Moscow and Rome do not see eye to eye when it comes to policy in
the region.
The Russian Orthodox Church is vocal in its support
for the Russian military campaign in Syria. “The fight with terrorism is a
holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world
fighting it,” said Vsevolod Chaplin, a former spokesman for the
church. The Vatican takes a different view. Pope Francis has called for a
peaceful solution to the conflicts in Iraq and Syria. “The international
community seems unable to find adequate solutions while the arms dealers
continue to achieve their interests,” he said.
Although it’s not entirely clear how renewed ties between
the churches would translate to an improved reality for Syrian Christians on
the ground, the Catholic Church has voiced an interest in increased
cooperation. But there are dangers to closer ties as well. In meeting with a
church that has vocally supported Russia strategy in Syria, the Vatican may be
inadvertently signaling its approval, Frank Synsyn, director at the Centre for
Ukrainian Historical Research at the University of Alberta, told Foreign Policy. “I appreciate that the Pope
is concerned about the Middle East, but the rest of his timing is very bad,”
Synsyn said. “It definitely gives credibility to Putin’s moves in Syria.”
Moreover, the focus on the state of Christianity in
the Middle East is a public relations win for the Russian Orthodox Church,
which is trying to shore up its position in Russia by presenting itself as the
defender of persecuted Christians around the world. “This meeting allows them
to play a large public role and sell it back in Russia,” said John Burgess, a
professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
If Friday’s dialogue is intended to initiate new
levels of cooperation in the Middle East, it’s also aimed at minimizing the
effects of longstanding tensions between the two churches in Ukraine, an area
where political and religious differences overlap.
The Russian Orthodox Church views Ukraine as an
important Orthodox base: The country is home to nearly half of the Russian
Orthodox Church’s monasteries and parishes, and is a crucial battleground for
maintaining and growing Moscow’s relevance outside of Russia.
But that relationship has been complicated by the
ongoing war in Ukraine: Kirill’s closeness to the Kremlin has damaged the
Russian Orthodox Church’s standing in the country and left the Patriarch
walking a tightrope between supporting Putin’s foreign policy and not appearing
insensitive to the Ukrainian government and public’s concerns.
In the aftermath
of the Maidan revolution, a large number of Ukrainians who adhered to the
Russian Orthodox Church changed allegiance to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of
the Kievan Patriarchate, which is not under the Russian Orthodox Church’s
purview (nor under the Vatican’s; it is independent). This church played a role
in supporting the protests that overthrew former Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014 (and is not to be confused with the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church, which looks to Moscow).
It’s against this backdrop that the bad blood between
the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church over Ukraine’s 5 million Greek
Catholics has taken on higher stakes. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
was founded in 1596 when a group of Orthodox believers switched their
allegiance to Rome. (Its members still practice the rites of Orthodox
Christianity, such as crossing themselves right to left and taking Holy
Communion directly into the mouth from a priest with a spoon, but see
themselves as loyal to the Vatican.) The Orthodox Church accused the Catholic
Church of stealing their believers – and, because the church buildings
themselves also changed hands, their property — and hard feelings have lingered
ever since.
Despite its small size, the Greek Catholic Church has
played an outsized role in politics: During the Soviet Union, the church
supported dissidents and later became a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism after
independence, in 1991. During the protest in 2013 and 2014 against Yanukovych,
the Greek Catholic Church supported protesters. But its political stance
has sometime put it at odds with Rome’s political priorities.
“Greek Catholics in Ukraine were hoping for more
support from the Vatican after the Maidan protests,” said Burgess. “Now there
is fear that [the Vatican is] tilting towards Moscow.”
While there is zero chance of Friday’s meeting
resolving the dispute over these Greek Catholics — Metropolitan Hilarion
Alfeyev, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of external
relations, at a press conference last week, called it a “never-healing bleeding wound that prevents
the full normalization of relations between the two Churches” — it can still
lay the groundwork for future dialogue about the status of church property.
Kirill hopes to use the meeting with Francis as a chance
to assert the Russian Orthodox Church’s influence within Orthodox Christendom
ahead of June’s Pan-Orthodox Council, the first meeting between the various
Orthodox churches to take place in over 1,000 years. The Patriarchate of
Constantinople is “first among equals” in Orthodoxy, but some two third of
Orthodox Christians are Russian Orthodox.
Ukraine aside, the differences between Catholic and
Orthodox Churches are mostly cultural, liturgical, and theological. But the
reasons for Friday’s meeting were mostly political. A thousand years after they
parted ways, pontiffs and patriarchs still have a role to play as political
leaders on the world stage.
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