Three years ago, on March 18, 2013, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Metropolitan Hilarion expressed hope that Pope Francis would continue the policy of rapprochement with the Orthodox Church and would not support, as he called it, the “expansion” of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the website Pravoslavie i Mir reported.
“The union is the most painful topic in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, in relations between the Orthodox and the Catholics. If the pope will support the union, then, of course, it will bring no good,” he said on the Rosiya 1 channel.
Metropolitan Hilarion also noted that Pope Francis belonged to the Jesuit order, noting, “It is believed that a Jesuit is someone who on the outside is one person, but inside someone else, says one thing, but means something else. This idea has been confirmed through our experience with such representatives.”
The representative of the ROC underscored concerns that the Catholic Church would not protect the interests of a particular order or region.
The Moscow Patriarchate under Patriarch Kirill was reluctant to congratulate Pope Francis following his election as pope of Rome. Moscow’s relations with the Vatican were strained under Pope John-Paul II, then there was optimism from Moscow under Pope Benedict XVI, but the Argentine pope’s relationship with Patriarch Sviatoslav was troubling.
Patriarch Sviatoslav commented that the new pope was educated by one of the Greek-Catholic leaders, knows the liturgy of the Greek-Catholic Church, is informed by its spirituality and will, beyond any doubt, “be concerned” about a Church that the Moscow Patriarchate in general and Kirill in particular view as a threat to their dominance.
The divergence of ministry styles between Rome and Moscow were also evident. Pope Francis fights ostentation and helps the poor, while Patriarch Kirill promotes luxury in the Russian hierarchy and close ties with the Kremlin, “sometimes against the interests of [his] flock,” noted Patriarch Sviatoslav.
As Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis was instrumental in registering the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Argentina. This was a sign from Moscow’s view that the new pope would be willing to engage in dialogue and to cooperate with the ROC in limited areas.
Source: “ROC hopes pope will not support UGCC,” Religious Information Service of Ukraine, The Ukrainian Weekly, March 24, 2013.