Alexis II calls relations btw Russian Church, Vatican knotty

Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Alexy II said Wednesday he believes that relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican remain knotty.

He said in an interview published at the Orthodox Encyclopedia website the problems burdening the contacts between the Russian Church and the Holy See had not been removed yet.

“In the first place, there is a problem posed by the Roman Catholics’ missionary activity among the traditional Orthodox population of Russia and other countries of the CIS, and we describe such stratagems as proselytism,” Alexy II said.

Another problem without a solution in sight is the onslaught of the Greek Catholics – the followers of the eastern rite who have been reporting to the Vatican since the 17th century -- on the Russian Orthodoxy community in the western regions of Ukraine.

The situation in at least three regions – Lvov, Ternopol, and Ivano-Frankovsk – remains far from normal, as the communities of canonical Russian Orthodoxy have been driven into bay there, Alexy II said.

The hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church are particularly alarmed by the Greek Catholics’ plans to press the Vatican for establishing their own patriarchate in Kiev, he said.

Alexy II recalled that a delegation of the Papal Council with Cardinal Walter Casper at the head had recently visited Moscow.

“We discussed the acutest problems impairing the relations between our churches, including the possible setting up of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate in Ukraine,” he said.