ASUNCION, February 17. /TASS/. Building bridges between Catholics and Orthodox Christians and historic talks of Pope Francis and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill can serve as an example for Christians in Ukraine, who should also learn to speak "a common language," Patriarch Kirill said on Wednesday at talks with President of Paraguay Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara.
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Focusing on his talks with Pope Francis, the patriarch said "we discussed the crisis in Ukraine and our shared belief that the Churches can have no other message than that of peace".
"And of course, this first of all concerns Christians of Ukraine. They must also lean to speak the same language, without politicizing their message, but trying to speak for peace and justice and seeing to it that the unity of the Ukrainian people be preserved," the patriarch said.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukrainian politicians started active moves towards separating the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church.
Difficult political processes in Ukraine in the 1990s brought new problems in the church sphere. Hundreds of Orthodox churches in some regions of Western Ukraine were seized by force by Greek Catholic congregations answering to Vatican
From February 11 to 22, the patriarch is on a visit to the Latin American countries of Cuba, Paraguay and Brazil.