Posted on 05/29/2008 1:22:40 PM PDT by NYer
KAZAN, May 27 (Itar-Tass) - Vatican Cardinal Walter Casper begins an unofficial visit to Kazan on Tuesday. Alexander Pavlov, press secretary of the Kazan bishopric, has told Itar-Tass, "The high-ranking official of the Vatican has headed the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity for many years. The guests is to have a conversation on the subject during a meeting with Archbishop Anastasiy of Kazan and Tatarstan".
The Vatican envoy is to tour the restored Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross of the Monastery of the Mother of God. The monastery was founded in 1578 in honour of the finding of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God. A highly venerated duplication of the sacred icon is now kept there. The icon duplication had been kept in the personal chapel of the Pontific for many years. In August 2004, Cardinal Casper brought it to Moscow and handed it over to Patriarch Alexy II.
Cardinal Casper is to tour a Catholic church construction site in Kazan, visit the Annunciation Cathedral of the Kazan Kremlin -- a UNESCO monument, and other Orthodox churches and monasteries of the millennium-old city.
On Tuesday afternoon, the distinguished guest will head to Diveyevo Monastery in Nizhny Novgorod Region to worship the relics of St Seraphim of Sarov
As a person whose family is part Catholic and part Orthodox, I sincerely hope that the legacy of bitterness between the two halves of the ancient Church can be healed. Even if they are not re-united formally, any steps toward making it easier for Catholics and Orthodox to celebrate the Eucharist together would be wonderful.
Only full reunion would allow that to happen, and that remains quite unlikely.
This is likely a follow up to Pope John Paul II’s return of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan to its rightful place, after it was taken out of the U.S.S.R. for its protection during the Communist years.
It was a gesture of friendship which I can only imagine was huge, huge, huge, for relations between the Russian Orthodox church and Rome.
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