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Citation :: Russian Patriarch Cancels Meeting With Vatican Envoy

MosNews

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has canceled a meeting with a high-ranking Vatican envoy whose trip to Russia was part of the Holy See’s efforts to improve relations between the two churches, a church spokesman said Tuesday.

Patriarch Alexy II’s meeting with Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was canceled for “technical reasons,” said Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a deputy head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign relations department.

Chaplin said that Martino’s meeting with the department’s head, Metropolitan Kirill, scheduled for later Tuesday, was still on. He told The Associated Press that the meeting will focus on the two churches’ attitude to social issues where they share common ground.

“Our positions on these issues are very close,” Chaplin said. “We have similar views and cooperate on such issues as social justice, peacemaking, social ethics, gender problems and reforms of international organizations.”

Chaplin said that Kirill and Martino were also likely to discuss disputes between the churches. “Any Orthodox-Catholic meeting may touch on problems in bilateral ties,” he said.

Martino’s visit comes only weeks after the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, said after returning from Moscow that an upgrade in relations was not yet possible.