Hilarion (Alfeyev) and Pope Francis: More Ecumenism at Top Levels of MP
The Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan, Hilarion (Alfeyev), head of the MP Department of External Church Relations and chief ecumenist for the MP, had an ecumenical meeting with Pope Francis, this past February 13th (NS). Hilarion and Francis discussed deeper ecumenical contacts between the Vatican and the MP, including the celebration of the four year anniversary of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kyril’s meeting in Havana [with the attendant Havana Declaration with its explicit ecumenist understanding of ecclesiology].
MP and Vatican representatives during the ecumenical meetings, expressed “their satisfaction at the fruitful development of cooperation between the two Churches within the framework of the Joint Working Group established for that purpose. For instance, in recent years the Summer Institutes project has shown considerable promise, providing an opportunity to clergymen and students from the Roman Catholic Church and the Moscow Patriarchate to undertake educational visits to Moscow and Rome respectively and learn more about the traditions and present-day life of the two Churches.”
Despite a rise in anti-ecumenist sentiment at the very low ranks of the MP in assorted and dissident places, the highest levels of the Moscow Patriarchate are fully committed to preaching and cooperating in ecumenism with the ancient Hildebrandian Anti-Christ institution [not lagging far behind the Phanar’s apostatic adulation].
The Moscow Patriarchate ecumenical delegation to the Antichrist authorities in the Vatican was initiated by Hilarion meeting with his long-time ecumenical associate, Cardinal Koch, where they “paid special attention to fostering the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue being held by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church.”
This was followed no long after by Cardinal Koch and Metropolitan Hilarion beginning a session of the “Joint Working Group for Cooperation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy See met at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.” This body seeks to broaden and deepen the ecumenist contact by “including social problems in it, which will make it possible to broaden considerably the area of cooperation between the two Churches.” We should not fail to notice that the MP continues to call the Antichrist institution of the Vatican a “Church”, and to engage in widespread cooperation with it at the highest official levels.
As noted above, the celebrations about the four year anniversary of the meeting in Havana was held. At the meeting, Met. Hilarion said: “The first meeting of the Primates of the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church to be held in history defined the prospect for developing bilateral relations for many years ahead. Due to the fundamental significance of the Havana meeting, it was agreed to mark this event annually by a joint conference on one of the pressing topics mentioned in the Joint Declaration which was signed to sum up the negotiations between the Pope and the Patriarch”.
This ecumenical visit to the Vatican was concluded with Hilarion (Alfeyev) meeting with Pope Francis.
For nearly 100 years increasing voices have condemned ecumenical contacts with any heretical group as inherently contradictory toward Orthodox Theology and Praxis. Large groups of Bishops, Priests, clergy, monastics, and laity existing in Greece, Romania, Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and now, increasingly abroad, have subsequently severed communion between themselves and the “Official Orthodox” organizations over the latter’s slide into theological modernism and ecumenism. In return, organizations like the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate, and others, which represent the “Official Church”, have condemned as heretics and schismatics those who oppose the modernist-ecumenist heresy; although the Phanar and MP allow minor anti-ecumenist views to be expressed by low ranking clergy and laity as long as they do not interfere with their ecumenist plans and relations.
