Could Pope Francis Finally Meet Patriarch Kirill?

The only times Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill ever met were in Cuba in 2016, and also March of this year over Zoom.

And last week, the Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations said the relationships between the Roman Church and Russian Orthodox Church are “practically frozen.”

Is there glimmer of hope for an ecumenical meeting in person between the two?

The Prime Minister of Montenegro thinks so. He said:

“I invited the pope to visit Montenegro, and I hinted to the pope that Montenegro, if he agrees with that, might be the right place to try to arrange the meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Orthodox Church in Montenegro.”

Dritan Abazović said Montenegro “can be the country where the pope can organize important meetings with other global religious leaders.”

“We are a tiny and peaceful country with no political pretension. We do not have big economy in competition with other countries. We are an Orthodox country, but we are filled with a spirit of dialogue.”

He thinks the support of the pope can make a difference in promoting “solidarity among nations” because he is “somehow leader of around 1.3 billion people, and he plays a critical role in the global society.”

“We need to think about more, more in terms of global unity and of course, global changes pertaining to global ethics. We had this problem of corona, which started in China but became a global moment, and we needed solidarity. And now we cannot wind down the aggression of the Russian Federation to Ukraine as a local issue. There is an energy crisis involved and connected with it, for example. So, one country cannot overcome it.“

🙏 Pray for ecumenism!