Less than a month after meeting briefly with Pope Francis in Kazakhstan, one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most senior prelates has said that relations between the two churches are more or less at a standstill.
In an interview with the “Church and Peace” programme on Russian television station Russia 24, Metropolitan Anthony Sevryuk of Volokolamsk, the Russian Orthodox Church’s “foreign minister,” said that “currently relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic one, are practically frozen.”
“At this stage, I must say that some comments we read and hear not only from the lips of the pope, but also the great part of his aides, absolutely do not contribute to the preparation of a new meeting and our further cooperation,” he said, referring to efforts being made to organise a second meeting between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.