Pope Benedict XVI poses for a photo with Carlo Ponte after the Italian conductor led a concert for the pope at the Vatican May 20. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow sponsored the concert as a gift to the pope. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chief ecumenist of the Russian Orthodox Church, represented the Russian church at the concert.<\/p><\/div>VATICAN CITY (CNS) \u2014 The gentle notes of Sergei Rachmaninoff\u2019s \u201cVocalise\u201d wafted through the Vatican audience hall and carried with them hopes for improved relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

After years of tense relations and painstaking theological dialogue, the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church are hoping music and art can create an atmosphere more conducive to their efforts to promote Christian unity.<\/p>\n

For leaders of both churches, the artistic compositions are not simply window dressing; they are evidence of how much Catholics and Orthodox share and are reminders of how Christianity has shaped European culture.
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\nThe May 20 concert capped two days of meetings and a conference that focused on \u201cRussian culture and spirituality in the Vatican.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last piece on the musical program was \u201cThe Song of Ascent,\u201d composed by Hilarion Alfeyev, otherwise known as Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the chief ecumenist of the Russian Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

Metropolitan Hilarion sat near Pope Benedict XVI at the concert, which was performed as a gift to the pope from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.<\/p>\n

Meeting journalists May 19, Metropolitan Hilarion said, \u201cIt seems to me that there are things which cannot be transmitted either through theological discourse or diplomacy, but can be transmitted through the language of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

While theological dialogue is essential for resolving the 1,000-year-old split between the Christian East and West, \u201cthe dialogue of the heart\u201d is also necessary, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough music we can say something we cannot say through words or diplomatic means or even through theological terms,\u201d he said. \u201cThe dialogue between cultures can bring many good results. It can liberate us from prejudices, from negative feelings toward each other, which we may have inherited from the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, told reporters that the work of the Russian composers chosen for the concert \u201cdemonstrates not only the quality of Russian music, but also how it is continuously interlaced with faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing out the influence of faith on centuries of European art, music and literature is part of both churches\u2019 efforts to remind Europeans that Christianity has inspired not only the beauty they see and hear around them, but also the values that have built their democracies and encouraged them to defend human rights and human dignity abroad.<\/p>\n

After the concert, Pope Benedict told the audience that \u201ccontemporary culture, especially European culture, runs the risk of amnesia \u2014 of forgetting and therefore abandoning the extraordinary patrimony that flows from and is inspired by Christian faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously that heritage includes prayer and service, but also centuries of fruitful dialogue between Christianity and the arts and cultures of different peoples, he said.<\/p>\n

Pope Benedict said Catholics and Orthodox must work together to help people today see the dangers of ignoring God and of pushing faith out of both private and public life; human dignity itself is threatened when people do not recognize that dignity flows from being created by God and is not the result of a majority vote on who deserves full rights and protection and who does not.<\/p>\n

During the concert, Metropolitan Hilarion read a message from Patriarch Kirill, who praised the idea of improving relations through cultural exchanges.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo understand a people, you need to listen to their music,\u201d the patriarch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic is a particular language that allows us to communicate with our hearts. Music is able to transmit feelings from the human soul and about spiritual states that words are not capable of describing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While improving Vatican-Russian Orthodox relations was an obvious goal of the concert, both Metropolitan Hilarion and top Vatican officials believe that Christians in Europe have a common mission that cannot be put on hold while the churches attempt to find unity.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, both of us see the importance of promoting Christian values in society. We cannot reduce our relations to just the unresolved theological questions,\u201d Metropolitan Hilarion said.<\/p>\n

Addressing a symposium on \u201cOrthodox and Catholics in Europe Today\u201d May 19, he said that up until the Second World War, \u201cthe relationship between the Orthodox and Western Christian churches was marked by rivalry.\u201d But Europe\u2019s \u201ctragic history of violence\u201d has made it clear to both that \u201cwe must build bridges, write new pages in the history of our relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as more people seem to lose their way ethically and turn their backs on faith, \u201cwe do not have a right to concentrate only on that which divides us,\u201d he said at the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Catherine.<\/p>\n

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told the conference that a new evangelization, \u201cconnected to a re-inculturation of the Gospel in Europe, is possible only if it is done ecumenically, in collaboration with the other churches and Christian communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he also said the process could be moved forward if the Russian Orthodox patriarch would finally agree to meet the pope, a meeting the Russians continue to say \u2014 and Metropolitan Hilarion repeated \u2014 can\u2019t be scheduled until Catholic-Orthodox tensions are resolved in Western Ukraine.<\/p>\n

From the Vatican\u2019s point of view, \u201ca meeting between the pope and the Russian patriarch would be an important sign that would make visible and more credible our common commitment,\u201d Cardinal Kasper said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope John-Paul II, long before the fall of Communism said that the spiritual renewal of Western Europe would come from Russia. These were prophetic words as it turns out, but at the time many culture watchers thought they were the idealistic ramblings of a dreamer. Who would have thought just a few short decades ago […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1784],"tags":[102,888,1351,940,614,954],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6752"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6752"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6772,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6752\/revisions\/6772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aoiusa.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}