Another Russian Connection: The Pope and Putin

UNITED STATES
The Open Tabernacle: Here Comes Everybody

August 5, 2017 by Betty Clermont

The most powerful man in the Vatican after Pope Francis, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, will make an “historic visit” to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of August “with the aim of improving Holy See relations both with the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.” The trip “will also pave the way for a potential visit by Pope Francis which some believe could happen as early as next year,” according to Vatican reporter Edward Pentin.

Pope Francis has met Putin twice at the Vatican in November 2013 and June 2015.
In February 2016, the pope made a stop at the José Martí airport in Havana on his way to Mexico for a meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. That meeting would not have happened “without a green light from Putin.”

Pope Francis said that Metropolitan Archbishop Hilarion, foreign minister of the Russian Orthodox Church, “has come many times to speak with me.”

“One of the most skilled and experienced Vatican diplomats,” Archbishop Celestino Migliore, was appointed as the pope’s ambassador to Russia in May 2016 after serving as his ambassador to the United Nations, reported Vatican expert Andrea Gagliarducci.

Migliore’s predecessor in Moscow, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, was then assigned as ambassador to the UN in Geneva. The “widespread saying among Vatican diplomats” is that “Geneva is where the UN headquarters’ decisions are prepared” and Jurkovic “knows very well the Russian world and its sensitivities,” Gagliarducci attested.

Before Jurkovic, Archbishop Antonio Mennini was the papal representative to Moscow from 2002 to 2010. (The Vatican and Russia established full diplomatic relations in 2009.) Mennini was made an official in the Vatican Secretariat of State in January 2017.

Within two months of Pope Francis’ election, Putin appointed Alexander Avdeev as his ambassador to the Vatican. Avdeev was Russia’s deputy Foreign Affairs minister from 1998 to 2002, special ambassador and plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to Paris until 2008 and then the Kremlin Minister of Culture until his appointment to the Vatican.

In view of the above, it would be safe to say that the Vatican is closer to Russia than any other country and the Russian Orthodox Church more than any other religion.

TRADITIONAL VALUES

Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor at Reuters, explained the alliance between Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church. “With strong financial backing from oligarchs, [the Russian Orthodox Church’s] global reach amounts to a network of the new Russian presence around the world, parallel to Moscow’s embassies and trade missions.”

Under Putin, “the Church has developed into a thriving institution that works closely with the Kremlin to promote common interests.”

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