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27
January 2017 | by James
Roberts
Pope
and Patriarch say same thing but they need to say it together, Metropolitan
Hilarion says
Addressing
Catholic and Orthodox leaders in Rome today, Pope Francis acknowledged that
many of them belong to churches that witness on a daily basis the spread of
violence and “brutality perpetrated by fundamentalist extremism”.
Wherever
there is violence and conflict, Christians are called to work patiently to
restore concord and hope, he told the Joint International Commission for
Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox
Churches. The commission was holding its 14th meeting since its inception
in 2003.
Francis
was speaking shortly after Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, in
an interview with France’s Catholic weekly Famille Chretienne, urged Catholic
and Orthodox leaders to “speak with one voice”. “We act separately on many
occasions. The Pope makes a statement and the Patriarch [Kirrill] says the
same, but they each do it alone. I firmly believe their message would be more powerful
if they both spoke with a single voice”, Metropolitan Hilarion said.
However
Francis’ analysis of the origins of the spread of violence differs in important
respects from the Orthodox analysis. Francis today pointed to social injustice
as a major factor. “Situations of such tragic suffering more easily take root
in the context of great poverty, injustice and social exclusion,” he claimed,
“due to instability created by partisan interests, often from elsewhere”.
His
remedy was for the Churches “to sow concord and to work patiently to restore
hope by offering the consoling peace that comes from the Lord, a peace we are
obliged together to bring to a world wounded and in pain.”
Metropolitan
Hilarion in his interview with Famille Chretienne, pointed to the decline of
religious belief in Europe as the first problem that the Churches need to
address together. “Our Christian identity gives us a strength stemming from God
and Christ, when the secularised societies typical of Europe can be described
as spiritually weak,” he said.
Patriarch
Kirill for his part has often spoken of the “catastrophe taking place in
Western Europe” because of the “enormous efforts today being made to prevent
primarily the Christians from authentic understanding of the Divine moral law”.
This
position is more in line with the joint declaration made by Francis and Kirill
when they met in Havana on 12 February last year, when the two leaders spoke of
the importance of working together against persecution of Christians.
“Our
gaze must firstly turn to those regions of the world where Christians are
victims of persecution,” the statement said. “In many countries of the Middle
East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters
in Christ are being completely exterminated.
"Their
churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects
profaned, their monuments destroyed. It is with pain that we call to mind the
situation in Syria, Iraq and other countries of the Middle East, and the
massive exodus of Christians from the land in which our faith was first
disseminated and in which they have lived since the time of the Apostles,
together with other religious communities.
“We
call upon the international community to act urgently in order to prevent the
further expulsion of Christians from the Middle East.”
However,
on the importance of the continuing gifts of Christian martyrs, the two
Churches do speak with one voice.
“May
the Christian communities be sustained by the intercession and example of our
many martyrs and saints who bore courageous witness to Christ,” Francis told
the joint commission today. “They show us the heart of our faith, which does
not consist in a generic message of peace and reconciliation but in Jesus
himself, crucified and risen … The martyrs and saints of all ecclesial
traditions are already one in Christ; their names are written in the one common
martyrology of God’s Church.”
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