Patriarch Kirill in Turkey

Relations between the Churches have been strained in the past because Churches in some former Soviet states, such as Estonia, have broken away from the Russian Orthodox Church and tried to pledge allegiance to Bartholomew instead. A spokesman for Bartholomew said the Churches of Estonia and Ukraine were expected to be on the agenda during the talks. Ukraine and Russia have long been in dispute over the ex-Soviet state's right to its own independent church. The global Orthodox Church does not recognise the Ukrainian Church. Kirill will attend a joint mass with Bartholomew on Sunday and is expected to hold talks with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul when he then visits Ankara.

Mavi Boncuk | Patriarch Kirill's planned visit to Turkey takes place on July 4-6, 2009

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia started visiting other local Orthodox churches in early July. By tradition, the head of one Orthodox Church visits the territories of others as they are listed in the diptych. The diptych currently has 15 Church jurisdictions: the Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russian, Georgian, Serb, Romanian, Bulgarian, Cypriot, Greek, Albanian and Polish Orthodox churches, the Orthodox Church in the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and the Orthodox Church in America. The Russian Patriarch arrived first in Turkey.

The Russian Orthodox Church says the main objective of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia’s visit to Turkey is restoring relations with the Constantinople Patriarchate and discussing moot points. The head of the Department for External Church Relations Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk has told journalists on Wednesday commenting on Patriarch Kirill’s meeting with Turkish Ambassador in Russia Halil Akinci. According to Archbishop Hilarion, future relations of the two Churches should exclude a situation similar to the one developed in Estonia in 1996. The Archbishop noted, then “Constantinople unilaterally proclaimed its jurisdiction and it resulted in a conflict situation, which still remains unsettled.” [1]

“We hope that Patriarchs of the two great Churches in fraternal communication will find the way to agree over the format of relations, format that will exclude such misunderstanding and be based on total mutual trust and fraternal love,” Archbishop Hilarion said.

The Russian Orthodox Church selected in January, 2009 in a ballot of church leaders in Moscow's ornate cathedral of Christ the Saviour. the 62-year-old Metropolitanof Smolensk and Kaliningrad Kirill as its new patriarch with 508 votes while his challenger Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk won 169 votes. "I accept and thank the Church Council for my election as Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia," the outspoken Kirill said solemnly after the results were announced, before leading the congregation in an Orthodox liturgy. Addressing the incense-filled gathering earlier, Kirill had made a strident call for church unity and urged the faithful to resist Protestant and Catholic proselytizing, dampening hopes of a transformation in poisonous ties with Rome.

Kirill's comments echoed the tough approach of his predecessor, who resisted attempts by late Polish pope John Paul II to reach out to Catholics in ex-Soviet lands and who refused to countenance a papal visit to Russia.

[1] A really interesting passage from “The legacy of the French Revolution: Orthodoxy and nationalism,” an essay by Paschalis Kitromilides, which explains, among other things, the historical process by which the Church of Greece was granted autocephaly.

While the Enlightenment confronted the church with a secular universalist ideology, which, questions of doctrine aside, could in some instances complement and even sustain its own ecumenical values, nationalism gave rise to a conflict, where the issues not only were on the level of secular versus transcendental values but also set the ecumenicity of Christian ideals against the parochialism of nationalism. The history of this conflict turned out to be identical with the history of the Orthodox Church in the nineteenth century.

Ultimately, writes Kitromilides, “the ecumenical patriarchate, once its own formal requirements were satisfied, supplied the canonical sanction for turning regional churches into instruments of secular authority. The latter in turn used the churches for the enhancement of its own power by enlisting them in a leading role in nationalist projects.” The essay is reproduced in the Cambridge History of Christianity (Vol. 5, Eastern Christianity) published in 2008.