Putin goes to the Pope: On the agenda, the war in Syria and Middle East’s Christians
Moscow (AsiaNews)
- The Kremlin is still speaking of a visit still at the preparation phase , but
by the Holy See Press Office has officially announced that at 5pm November 25, the
Russian President, Vladimir Putin, will make his first official visit to Pope
Francis. Putin
could meet the Pope in Rome in late November , said presidential spokesman
Dmitri Peskov , commenting on the news releases of Italian media, and confirmed
by the Vatican, on the private audience between the two leaders on November 25
, the eve of the inter-government summit between Italy and Russia , scheduled
the next day in Trieste .
"The
possibility of this meeting is being discussed as part of the preparation for
the visit of the President to Italy, on 25 and 26 November," Peskov told
Interfax . The
audience with the Pope according to some media is "strongly desired"
by the Russian president , who at the G20 summit in September in St.
Petersburg, had explicitly cited the Vatican among states opposed to an external
military attack on Syria , which at the time seemed imminent .
A
few days beforehand, Pope Francis had written a letter to the head of the
Kremlin , who has always supported a diplomatic and political solution to the
Syrian crisis, in which he stressed the concern of the Holy See for the
possibility of military intervention as loudly demanded by the United States. Peskov
said that "it is still too early" to say whether during the meeting
at the Vatican will discuss Bergoglio's letter, but certainly there will be the
theme of international efforts to end the Syrian conflict and the situation of
Christians in Middle East on the table. Issues
which currently unite the Holy See and the Patriarchate of Moscow, for its part
committed - both economically and diplomatically - to the protection of this
minority in the region.
In
a recent interview with AsiaNews the same Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Orthodox Patriarchate , Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk , chairman
of the Department for External Relations described work between the two
Churches on
the theological level as " unsatisfactory ", while at the same time
speaking of "effective" work together " on moral values and
social issues " , which also includes the defense of traditional values
in Europe and the Christian presence in the Middle East. In
fact, Hilarion will visit the Vatican ahead of Putin when, on 12 November , he
travels to Rome to present the book "Word of God and the word of
man," with contributions by the Russian philologist Serghei Averintsev .
The
issue of persecuted Christians is not only central to the foreign policy of the
Patriarchate , but also that of the Kremlin, increasingly willing to stand as
mediator between East and West , calibrating complaints of violence against
Christian minorities , with declarations of friendship and support for Muslim leaders . Last
month, about 50 thousand Syrian Christians asked for Russian citizenship, with
the fear of "being banished from their lands, for the first time since the
birth of Christ." The
Kremlin has now said it will seriously consider the request. Putin
has already had three meetings with the previous Popes : in March 2007, with
Benedict XVII and with John Paul II , in June 2000 and November 2003. In
February of 2011, it was instead the then head of the Russian state, Dmitri
Medvedev, to pay a visit to Pope Ratzinger in the Vatican, two years after the
restoration of full diplomatic relations between the two countries.
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