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‘Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow’.

MOSCOW (Catholic Online) – The warming of relations between the Catholic and orthodox Churches are evident in their pledge to work together in the defense of life, marriage and family, and other issues of mutual concern in an increasingly secularized age. However, the question still looms as to when Patriarch Kirill and Pope Benedict XVI will meet.

“Interfax News” reported the following on Thursday, November 12, 2009:

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Meeting Possible between Pope, Patriarch Kirill

“Moscow, November 12, Interfax - Relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches are improving and a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, may be in the cards, a Russian Orthodox bishop said.

"Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow," Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Department for External Church Relations, told reporters in Moscow.

"There are no specific plans for the venue or timing of such a meeting but on both sides there is a desire to prepare it," the Archbishop said.

Preparations for such a meeting must involve finding "a common platform on all remaining points of dispute," the Archbishop said.

One such issue is the relations between the Uniate community and Orthodox believers in Ukraine. In the early 1990s, "the fragile interdenominational balance was upset and a serious situation took shape that still exists," Archbishop Hilarion said.

At the same time, conversion of Orthodox believers into Catholicism is less of a problem today than it was a decade ago, he said.

Benedict XVI is "a very reserved, traditional man who does not seek the expansion of the Catholic Church to traditionally Orthodox regions," the Archbishop said.

When Benedict XVI, shortly after being elected Pope, met with Metropolitan Kirill (the present Russian Patriarch, then head of the DECR), a papal visit to Russia "was taken off the agenda as now it appears to us to be impossible," the bishop said.

After Metropolitan Kirill was elected Patriarch, "one can hope for further steps" in Orthodox-Catholic dialogue because the Patriarch "will continue the line on relations with Christians of other denominations that he pursued as part of his former activities," the Archbishop said”.