Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, right, leads Sunday prayers with Istanbul Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, left, in a show of unity at the patriarchal church of Aya Yorgi (St. George) in Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, July 5, 2009. (AP Photo\/Ibrahim Usta)<\/p><\/div>ISTANBUL (ANA-MPA<\/a> – A. Kourkoulas) Visiting Moscow and All Russia Patriarch Kirill I joined Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew for the mass at the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Fanar on Sunday, in what he later described as “the most important event of our visit”.<\/p>\n

The new Russian Patriarch further reinforced the message of unity that his visit is designed to promote and referred to the strong historic bonds between the two Churches, in ritual and in the monastic traditions they observed.<\/p>\n

“Our common tradition is the steady basis of our joint witness toward the modern world,” Patriarch Kirill added.<\/p>\n

“To the conditions in which religion is pushed to the sidelines of social life, when even the meaning of sin itself is eradicated, when traditional moral values are radically revised and on the base of the economy we place the principle of profit, we have an obligation to unite our efforts to defend the rules of the gospel and formulate a universal Orthodox reply to the challenges of the times,” he stressed.<\/p>\n

In his reply, Patriarch Bartholomew referred to the important decisions taken by the Fourth PanOrthodox PreConsciliar Conference at Chambesy in Geneva, praising the constructive cooperation and the contribution of the Moscow Patriarchate in the success of this conference, which manage to resolve one of the most thorny problems for the course of the Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

Bartholomew stressed that the administrative organisation of the Orthodox Church into independent Patriarchates and Autocephalous Churches “in no way implies that we constitute Churches and not a Church”.<\/p>\n

“The Orthodox Church does not, of course, have a primacy in power but it does not lack a coordinating organ, one that does not impose but expresses the unanimity to the local Churches,” he said, adding that this ministry was “humbly practised by long and holy tradition” by the Patriarchate in Fanar in full compliance with the dictates of Orthodox ecclesiology.<\/p>\n

Patriarch Kirill stated that his “peaceful visit” to Fanar was the first of a series of visits to the Orthodox Churches around the world and “a good start for renewing the brotherly relations in Christ of the two great Orthodox Patriarchates of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ”.<\/p>\n

“We must not forget that the Russian Church is linked by special ties to the first in the order of the holy Diptychs Patriarchal Throne of Constantinople. From this we received the enlightenment of the light of faith and the principles of scholarly wisdom, temple-building and agiography, the service and the whole variety of the ecclesiastical structure,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISTANBUL (<\/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":[160,296],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828"}],"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=2828"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2841,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}