| International News

During an Oct. 2 meeting with Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia at St. Daniel’s Monastery here, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, archbishop of Milan, expressed regret that intensified activity of some Western missionaries “does not always appear proper from ecumenical viewpoint” and may have been insulting to the Russian Orthodox Church.

He noted that since the 1990s, religious and missionary activity in Eastern Europe intensified through the individual initiative of various persons from the West.

“It gives us anguish to realize that some Western Christians, including Catholics, failed to discern and recognize the incomparable spiritual richness of holy Russia and to appreciate and respect the religious and cultural heritage of the great Orthodox tradition,” Cardinal Tettamanzi said.

The Russian Orthodox Church “had historically and continues to have the gift of proclaim the gospel in this land and the mission to bear witness in it,” he said. Such aggressive proselytism today, he added, “is condemned by many among, not only the Orthodox but also Catholics.”

According to the cardinal, in the process of Christianization, “there must be no room for confessional competition in the name of the gospel.”

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations, thanked Cardinal Tettamanzi for his disapproval of the inappropriate missionary activity.

”I would like to express gratitude for so clearly stated a position,” Rev. Vsevolod told Interfax Oct. 9, “that it was not the intention of their church to carry out mission among the Orthodox wherever they may be.”

“It is important, of course, that the details of this attitude should be clarified,” he said, adding that he hoped that “this official attitude be practiced by the priests and monastics who work in various countries.”