Pope signals hope for visits to China, Russia

Cuban president Raul Castro, left welcomes Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, right, upon his arrival at Jose Marti International airport in Havana, on February 11, 2016.

Pope Francis says he plans to visit Colombia in the first half of next year if the Colombian government and rebels make progress and sign a peace treaty to end Latin American’s longest-running conflict.

The joint declaration is expected to touch on the single most important issue of shared concern between the Catholic and Orthodox churches today: the plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria who are being killed and driven from their homes by the Islamic State group. The meeting will bring the heads of the Russian and Catholic churches together for the first time since Christianity split.

“China and Russian Federation, I have them here”, he said, pointing to his heart. The Archbishop had been visiting because of Pope John Paul I’s installation as pope.

Eastern Orthodoxy split with Rome in ten-fifty-four.

Kirill will also visit Cuba’s small Russian Orthodox Church, built from 2004 to 2008.

“…we are confident that this meeting will be of great social value also for nonbelievers, becoming a moment of rejoicing for respectful populations, as the Popes and the Patriarchs in history prayed for years, during which they longed for this”.

The Catholic Church hopes his time in the country will reinvigorate Catholicism. About two-thirds of the world’s Orthodox Christians belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said. First stop is Havana’s airport, where Francis will meet for a few hours with Kirill in a ground-breaking step toward improving Catholic-Orthodox relations. “I don’t think he understands the danger of the open border that we have with Mexico”.

“The meeting has a political, a humanitarian significance”, said Yevgeny Nikiforov, a prominent Russian historian of the Church who helps run an Orthodox radio station.

Archbishop Nikodim collapsed in the Pope’s private library in Rome. “The Russian and Cuban people are united by many years of collaboration, cooperation and friendship”.

Now the pope is seeking to fix a much longer rupture. He will fly from Mexico City to Tuxtla Gutierrez. There he will celebrate a very Indian Mass and present a decree authorizing the use of indigenous languages in liturgy.

Pope Francis was already getting into the Mexican spirit Friday, when he tried on a broad brimmed sombrero while heading to Cuba and Mexico.