FROM OUR REPORTER
BUDAPEST – Ecumenical dialogue and diplomacy have their times, often long ones, and there is always a plan B. Thus Pope Francis, after the morning meetings, met Metropolitan Hilarion at the nunciature in Budapest, until last year «Foreign Minister» and number two of the Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow, then «sacked» and sent to Hungary for his anti-war positions while Patriarch Kirill blessed the invasion of Ukraine. The meeting lasted twenty minutes, as always the Pope greeted the metropolitan with a hugkissing his pectoral cross.
For thirteen years, as president of the Russian patriarchate’s department of ecclesiastical affairs, Hilarion was the man of dialogue with the Holy See. For months, as he told him to Courier, was preparing a new meeting between the Pope and Kirill, before the war in Ukraine precipitated the situation. Francesco, in the interview with the director of CourierLuciano Fontana was succinct: “The patriarch of Moscow cannot transform himself into Putin’s altar boy”.
In the meantime Hilarion had distanced himself from his superior, organic to the Kremlin’s propaganda. Already a few weeks before the invasion, on January 29 of last year, in a radio broadcast on the Russia 24 channel, the metropolitan had spoken with concern about what was happening, “in America, in Ukraine and in Russia there are politicians who they believe that war is the right decision in this situation», and he said he was «deeply convinced that war is not a method to solve accumulated political problems».
Later he had gone so far as to quote Rasputin, who had warned the tsar that «If Russia had entered the war, it would have threatened the whole country with catastrophic consequences», leading not only to the loss of part of the Russian lands but also of “Russia as such”. Thus, in June, the Metropolitan he had been replaced as foreign minister and permanent member of the Orthodox Synod, and sent to Budapest as «administrator» of the Russian church in Hungary. The independent site Orthodox News he recalled “Metropolitan Hilarion’s effort to differentiate himself from the aggressive attitude of the Patriarch of Moscow and his full identification with the requests of the Kremlin†.
It is important to note that Kirill, appointed twenty years earlier by Alexius II, was also the Patriarchate’s “foreign minister” when the old patriarch died and succeeded him in 2009. Hilarion was the most likely candidate to succeed Kirill.
And it could still be in the future, if in the end Putin, and with him the current patriarch, end up in disgrace. Even now, after all, he is the Russian Orthodox leader who has maintained the best relations with the Catholic Church and the other Orthodox churches en route to Moscow. According to the website of the Metropolitan of Budapest, Hilarion «told the Pope about the life of the diocese of Budapest-Hungary of the Patriarchate of Moscow, its social and educational activity and its relations with the archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church and the other Christian confessions».
As a memento of the meeting, he gave the Pope four volumes of his monograph «Jesus Christ. Life and teachings», translated into Italian. For Francis, it is not just another important channel to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict, his concern is at the center of his trip to Budapest. After the moving visit to the children of the Catholic Institute for the blind and special home for children «Blessed Laszlo Batthyany-Strattmann», Francis in the morning he met refugees and the poor in the church of Santa Elisabetta: «We need a Church that is fluent in the language of charity, universal language that everyone hears and understands, even the furthest away, even those who don’t believe», he said. And to the thousands of young people who arrived at the Budapest sports hall in the afternoon: «Not many kilometers from here, war and suffering are the order of the daytake life into your own hands to help the world live in peace»
Dialogue with the Orthodox, e the dream of a reunification of the apostolic Churches after the schism of 1054, has been at the heart of his pontificate since day one. As soon as he was elected, on 13 March 2013, he presented himself as the bishop of the Church of Rome who “presides in charity over all the Churches”. Few paid attention to it, but it was a refined quotation from St. Ignatius of Antiochfather of the undivided Church at the beginning of the second century, well known by the Orthodox world: an outstretched hand, to say that the primacy of Peter’s successor is founded only on “charity” and not on the power of those who want to command.