Good coverage in the New York Times about the dedication on Sunday of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine on the grounds of the Russian Embassy in Rome.<\/p>\n

From Russian Orthodox Consecrate Parish in Rome<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cToday is a special event,\u201d said Andrey Shumkin, a priest with the delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate, \u201cand the presence of two cardinals here is a visual sign of collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cardinal Kasper said that \u201ca lot of progress\u201d between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox church had been made in the last 10 years. Both sides have demonstrated a willingness to discuss, as have the pope and Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, he said. A meeting between the two will come \u201cwhen the time is mature,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, from the advance story, Relations Warm Between Russian Orthodox Church and Vatican<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Reflecting Russia\u2019s geopolitical dance with Europe, the Moscow Patriarchate has found common ground with Benedict, and since Patriarch Kirill was enthroned, he has appointed church officials who portray the pope as a like-minded man of the church, not politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis pope, in contrast to the previous one, doesn\u2019t strive to always be politically correct,\u201d said Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, an Oxford-educated theologian who was until recently the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Vienna and Austria and the Russian Church\u2019s representative to European institutions. \u201cHe believes he must speak of the teachings of the Catholic church. The task of such a church figure, especially of such rank, is to clearly state the teaching of the church, even if it doesn\u2019t correspond to contemporary standards of political correctness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archbishop Hilarion was selected in March to lead the patriarchate\u2019s Department of External Church Relations, which Patriarch Kirill headed for two decades. Both Archbishop Hilarion and the Reverend Vsevolod Chaplin, another rising church official in his early forties who heads a newly created department on church and society relations, strongly backed Benedict\u2019s controversial comments in March that condoms are not the solution to the spread of AIDS. Their voices were among the few supporting Benedict\u2019s stand.<\/p>\n

From Rome come indications that Patriarch Kirill\u2019s election represents a new chance for Russian Orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

His predecessor, Patriarch Aleksy II, \u201chad to work to refound the church, to set up structures, organize the clergy\u201d after Soviet power crumbled, said Monsignor Bruno Forte, archbishop of Chieti-Vasto and a member of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. \u201cKirill has been handed a reborn church, so he has the strength to forge a new path.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Good coverage in the New York Times about the dedication on Sunday of the Church of the Great Martyr Saint Catherine on the grounds of the Russian Embassy in Rome. From Russian Orthodox Consecrate Parish in Rome: \u201cToday is a special event,\u201d said Andrey Shumkin, a priest with the delegation from the Moscow Patriarchate, \u201cand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[750,749,102,204,160,296,466,41,275],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2348"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2354,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions\/2354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}