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RUSSIA
President urges dialogueCalls Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation urgent
Russian President Vladimir Putin told the French magazine Paris Match that reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church was “an urgent issue.”
Putin said he invited Pope John Paul II to visit Moscow during his recent trip to the Vatican. “But it will be a scandal if the Pope comes to Moscow and will not meet the Patriarch (Alexei II),” he said. “Just think of this: Who of us would like to live against the background of a scandal? This will not help to bring our positions closer,” Putin said, adding that the Pontiff is “an intelligent person” and “understands everything well.”
The president said he also discussed religious extremism with the Pope, especially Muslim extremism. “The Pontiff told me how Muslim extremists treat representatives of the Holy See in Algeria and West Timor. Extremists do the same with Russians in Chechnya,” Putin said. In the Russian leader’s opinion, the only means of struggle against religious extremism is “to raise the well-being of Muslim peoples and Muslim countries as a whole as well as realization of human values.”
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