Interview to Zenit International News Agency

What are the hopes of the Orthodox Church with regard to the recent meeting between His Holiness Patriach Alexis II and the Catholic Cardinal Walter Kasper?

We hope that the fruitful discussions which took place between the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the high representative of the Roman Catholic Church will lead to a better relationship between the two Churches. We hope that the concerns expressed by our Church and also by other Orthodox Churches, in particular, those related to the situation of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, will be taken seriously.

According to you, will Pope John Paul II establish a patriarchate for the Greek-Catholic Church in the Ukraine? If yes, why?

It is difficult for me to predict how Pope John Paul II will be acting, but I hope the unanimous position of all Orthodox Churches against the establishment of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate will be taken into account. The question is: why has the issue of the Patriarchate in Ukraine become so urgent? While for several centuries the Greek Catholics lived without a Patriarchate, why should the Patriarchate be created now, when there is so much controversy around the very issue of Uniatism? While joint Catholic-Orthodox documents signed at Freising and Balamand stated clearly that Uniatism is not a way towards unity, why should the status of Ukrainian Uniate Churches be upgraded?

Another question is: why should the see of the Greek Catholic primate be moved from Lviv to Kiyv? Traditionally Greek Catholics have been strong in Galicia, but they have never had any significant presence in the rest of Ukraine, especially in Kiyv, where the vast majority of believers belong to the Orthodox Church. The impression is that by transferring the see from Lviv to Kiyv and by attempting to create a Patriarchate the Greek Catholic Church under Cardinal Husar wants to assume the identity of a national Ukrainian Church, as opposed to the ‘Moscow Church’ headed by Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiyv. And this is in spite of the fact that Orthodox believers greatly outnumber the Greek Catholics throughout Ukraine, except Galicia.

Moreover, the transfer of the see from Lviv to Kiyv points to a clear expansionist strategy. The recent official statistics show that there are 14,350 Orthodox communities in the Ukraine, including those belonging to non-canonical (schismatic) groups. If we take only the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, it counts 10,044 parishes. As far as the Greek Catholic Church is concerned, it counts 3,334 parishes, of which 2,969 are found in Galicia. In Kiyv there are 823 Orthodox churches and only 8 Greek Catholic ones. The question arises: what have the Greek Catholics to do with Kiyv? It is quite obvious that any expansion of Greek Catholicism in traditionally Orthodox territories will take place at the expense of the Orthodox and to their detriment.

You pose the question: if Pope John Paul II does establish a Patriarchate for the Greek-Catholic Church in the Ukraine, why would he do this? I do not know the answer. According to some experts, there is a certain lobby in the Vatican which wants the decision to create a Patriarchate in Ukraine to be taken precisely during Pope John Paul’s pontificate. The reasoning behind this is as follows: the relations with the Orthodox Church cannot be much worse than they are now, and even if they are completely ruined, there will nevertheless be a new chance to improve them when there is a new Pope. The new Pope may claim that the establishment of the Greek Catholic Patriarchate in Ukraine was a mistake made by the present Vatican administration and may even apologise for it. The Patriarchate will, however, be already in place and will not be abolished. In this way two birds will be killed with one stone. I wish to believe that all this is pure speculation and that there are no such intentions in the Vatican.

How do you believe the relations among the represented church groups would change after such a step is taken?

I presume the official theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches, which is now temporarily suspended, will be stopped altogether, and the Catholic-Orthodox relations are likely return to the pre-Vatican II situation. This, I contend, will be a great tragedy.

There are various points on which the different Churches are divided. Briefly, on which theological foundation could the Churches increase their relations?

Responding to this question, I would like to repeat what I said in November 2003 at the University of St Paul, Minnessotta, and at the Catholic University of America, when addressing the issue of Catholic-Orthodox Relations. It seems to me that, if the relationship on a practical level is normalized, the two Churches may resume theological discussions. One of the most important theological questions to be discussed after the issues of Uniatism, proselytism and ‘canonical territory’ have been sufficiently addressed will be the notion of primacy. While the Catholics may wish to revisit this issue in order to make their doctrine more consonant with the tradition of the Ancient Undivided Church, the Orthodox may, on their part, wish to develop further their own comprehension of primacy in the Universal Church. We are accustomed to criticizing the Catholics for their view on primacy, but can we develop our own understanding of it in a way that convinces Catholic theologians? In order to do this, we must agree among ourselves on our interpretation of the relations between the local and the universal Church. In what precisely does the ‘universality’ of the Church consist? How is this universality to be manifested? Is there any room in Orthodox ecclesiology for a kind of ‘universal’ leadership? It seems to me that the representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will differ in their response to the last question from the representatives of other Orthodox Churches. The question therefore is not solved and requires further discussion.

Once the divisive issues have been addressed and the existing difficulties resolved, Catholics and Orthodox will be much more amenable in their common response to the challenges of the modern world, such as ever growing secularism, ever increasing globalization, ever more evident loss of moral and ethical values. The Catholic and the Orthodox Churches both belong to the ‘traditional’ stream of Christianity, and together have much to say to the modern world, where the very notion of ‘tradition’ is put into question. Their testimony, however, will be successful only if they are able to speak ‘with one mouth and with one heart.’

There is, therefore, a long road ahead. But there are always some signs of hope. And there is indeed a common well from which both the Catholics and the Orthodox may draw. As one of my close friends, a Roman Catholic hermit and theologian, said, ‘it is sin that divided the Churches and it is sanctity that will unite them again.’ The legacy of saints and martyrs is common to both Churches – both have centuries-old experience of martyrdom and sanctity. In the 20th century both Catholics and Orthodox, together with people from other confessions and religions, suffered in Soviet and Nazi camps: many gave their lives for the faith. There are many striking testimonies of solidarity among Christians of different confessional backgrounds in the Soviet camps. These Christians were united not only because they had a common enemy, but also because they shared with each other their love for Christ and for his Church, a love which was not shaken even by the most severe persecutions. There was more that united them than that divided them, because what united them was Christ himself.