На Кубе, В день в течение веков

Before anything else, as no shortage of coverage elsewhere over the last week has shown a staggering depth of ignorance, one thing apparently bears clarifying: in the historic context of today's first-ever meeting between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Moscow, any mention of "a 1,000 year-old split" would be enough to flunk the exam on what all this means.To be sure, this afternoon's encounter in Cuba between Francis and Kirill I is a deeply significant moment, but its resonance lies far more on a geopolitical level than a theological one. Much as religion and politics are conflated and confused for each other these days, that distinction is beyond important – and as the historical primer seems necessary, well, let's try to make it quick. In essence, Christianity in modern-day Russia was barely at its inception at the time of the East-West Schism of 1054, when the mutual excommunications were levied between the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople – the respective successors of the apostles Peter and Andrew. By contrast, the en masse baptism of the Kievan Rus (the precursors of the future empire, based in what's now Ukraine) took place less than seven decades earlier, in 988; a patriarchate at Moscow wasn't established until the late 1500s, and the rise of the Russian church as a major player beyond its borders roughly coincides with the empire-building that followed it, culminating in Peter the Great's turn toward Europe a century later. Fast-forwarding into the present (and away from Moscow), the lifting of the Catholic-Orthodox excommunications in 1965 by now-Blessed Paul Paul VI and the Ecumenical (read: "universal") Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople paved the way toward an ongoing East-West dialogue which has grown past cooperation on common social causes to broach theological and ecclesiological questions – the shape of papal primacy now among them – with an eye to resolving what the most recent joint text has termed "the search for full communion." Yet as Constantinople today merely enjoys "first among equals" status among the world's 14 autocephalous (self-governing) Orthodox churches, the participation of the others has sometimes been a matter of fits and starts. Nevertheless, most of the major Eastern players are already at the table.Today, however, is a different animal: while Moscow has aimed to bill the shared concern over Christian persecution in the Middle East as the impetus for the meeting it's long resisted, with a "Great and Holy Council" of global Orthodoxy's major branches – the first gathering of its kind in some eight centuries – set to convene in June amid the groups' usual thicket of rivalry and intrigue, the largest, most driven (and, indeed, politically powerful) of the Eastern churches gets to showcase its clout by commanding the world's attention as its leader sits down with the Pope on what're essentially the Russians' terms.All that said, lest any illusions exist of the Moscow Patriarchate somehow eclipsing Constantinople in Catholic-Orthodox relations – or any significant reshaping of the dialogue at the expense of Rome's longtime partners in it – think again.* * * As the schedule goes, with Francis & Co. slated to depart Rome before 8am today, the Volo Papale – known in the States by the call-sign "Shepherd One" – will land at Havana's Jose Martí Airport at 2pm local/Eastern (2000 Rome), with the Pope being whisked immediately to the waiting Kirill in a terminal suite.After just over two hours of private talks, the duo are slated to emerge at 4.30 for the signing of the first-ever joint declaration between the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches. To (what should be) no one's surprise, the months of negotiations over the text have unsurprisingly stretched into the very last hours before the summit, with Russia's Interfax agency citing the expectation of ROC officials that further alterations or additions to the document could even be made during the Pope-Patriarch meeting itself. Beyond the formalities for the joint text itself – its content only be released once it's signed – both Francis and Kirill will deliver public speeches before parting ways: the patriarch to continue his visit on the island, and the pontiff to Mexico City, where he'll arrive at 7.30pm local to begin his six-day trek.On a context note, while the Russian church's ecumenical chief, Metropolitan Hilarion, has issued a steady stream of interventions on his patriarch's behalf, and viewpoints of every stripe have come out of the woodwork over recent days, it is a sign of the situation's delicacy that the Vatican delegation – led by the Christian Unity Czar Cardinal Kurt Koch – has maintained an almost absolute silence since last week's announcement. In the lone exception to the Roman lack of comment, the the Holy See's full-time liaison to the Orthodox churches, the French Dominican Fr Hyacinthe Destivelle, revealed on Vatican Radio earlier this week that while Francis and Kirill's joint declaration will be "a long statement, very substantial, it will not be a theological document," dealing instead with "different aspects of collaboration... that the Russian Orthodox church and the Catholic church can give in our world today." Among other issues slated to figure in the text, Destivelle cited Christian persecution, "secularization, the protection of life from conception to its natural end; the question of the family, marriage and youth."Reiterating that the document will have no theological weight, the Dominican added that "the role of this meeting is in the frame of the dialogue of charity, not of the dialogue of truths."Keeping that in mind, for everything as it happens, stay tuned.-30-