Patriarch Kirill plants Francis and will not meet him in Kazakhstan

The long-awaited meeting between Pope Francis and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill I, will finally not take place in Kazakhstan. The patriarch will not travel to Nur-Sultan to attend the 7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, to be held on September 14 and 15, and where the leader of the Catholic Church wanted to meet Kirill for the second time.

This was reported by the head of foreign relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Antoni of Volokolamsk, who told the RIA Nóvosti agency that “the holy patriarch will not participate in the work of the congress. And, therefore, a meeting with Pope Francis in Kazakhstan is not planned.”

In his opinion, the meeting between the two religious leaders cannot be held within the framework of an international forum, but “must become an independent event due to its special importance.” At the congress the Russian Orthodox Church will be represented only by an official delegation.

Francisco has indeed confirmed his presence at the congress despite his knee problems, which will prevent him from making long trips. This visit, however, is short and limited to this event. “I hope to be able to greet him and talk a little with him as a pastor,” he had commented on the possible meeting with Kiril in Nur-sultan, previously called Astana.

The Argentine pontiff was the first leader of the Catholic Church to meet with a Russian patriarch since the Great Schism of the year 1054 in a historic meeting held in 2016 in Havana. Since the war broke out in Ukraine, the Pope has only spoken with Kiril once, by video call, although he has recently received Metropolitan Antoni at the Vatican.

The Holy See was also working on another meeting between the two in Jerusalem in June, but in the end they decided to suspend it because Vatican diplomacy understood that it could lead to confusion.

Over the past six months Kirill has repeatedly blessed the war as a crusade against what he sees as decadent Western values, sparking an unprecedented internal rebellion within the Russian Orthodox Church. Metropolitan Antoni, in fact, replaced Hilarion as head of the foreign relations department in June, who had been critical of the conflict before it broke out.

Francis has condemned the war but has tried to keep the door open for dialogue with Moscow. He has also angered Kyiv by claiming that Darya Dugina, daughter of Vladimir Putin’s ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, killed in a car bomb, is another “innocent victim”.

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