BUENOS AIRES, February 9. /TASS/. No steps are being taken now to prepare a meeting between Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill and Pope Francis, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, said on Wednesday.
"No, it is not being prepared," he said when asked whether a new meeting is being looked at.
He recalled that the second meting between the Patriarch and the Pope was initially scheduled for 2022 but last spring the Holy See said the meeting had been cancelled, which, according to Metropolitan Anthony, was "a surprise" for the Russian side. After that, the Vatican said that such a meeting could be organized during a world congress of religious leaders in Kazakhstan in September 2022, but it failed to he held.
"On our part, we have always been open for such a meeting and we think that a meeting between the two religious leaders, who represent the majority of Christians across the globe, would be important and useful, but <…> in the context of our official communication with the Holy See we have heard no new statements on this matter via official channel," he added.
The first meeting between Patriarch Kirill and Pope Francis took place in Havana in 2016. In December 2021, the Pope said that his second meeting with the Patriarch was being prepared. In the spring of 2022, he told the Corriere della Sera daily that the meeting was planned for June in Jerusalem but was postponed. The Russian Orthodox Church said back then that they were surprised by this "unilateral" decision, of which the Moscow Patriarchate learnt from the mass media.