Twenty years after a similar attempt failed, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill will meet in Cuba next week for a two-hour session that the Vatican and the Moscow Patriarchate say is “the first in history” – their churches split in the 11th century.
The historic meeting will finally happen as the result of an “intersection of the itineraries” of the two leaders who’ll both be visiting Latin America next week, the Russian Orthodox Church says.
Patriarch Kirill will be in Cuba to visit President Raul Castro; as NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports, “Pope Francis will make a previously unscheduled stopover on his way to Mexico for a six-day visit.”
The two religious leaders will meet in person, along with Castro, at Havana’s José Martí International Airport. The plan calls for them to speak for two hours and sign a joint declaration.
The two churches say the meeting comes after “a long preparation” – a term that could be seen as including intense negotiations in 1996 and 1997 that would have brought Patriarch Alexy II and Pope John Paul II together in Austria, the Russian Orthodox Church says. But that agreement unraveled.
“The two churches have remained estranged over the primacy of the pope,” Sylvia says, “and Russian Orthodox accusations that Catholics are poaching converts in Russia.”
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