i never posted this as i didn’t want to get into an argument over it but it came out the same day...
19 June 2007, 14:36
Metropolitan Kirill denies rumors of Patriarch’s early meeting with Pope
Moscow, June 19, Interfax - Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has denied rumors of Russian Patriarch Alexy II’s early meeting with Pope Benedict XVI.
“It’s difficult to say who circulated these rumors - perhaps someone who wants to keep them rolling,” Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, told the press in Moscow on Tuesday.
Metropolitan Kirill also said that the Russian Orthodox Church remains in permanent dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, discussing important issues with it.
“But Pope Benedict’s visit to Moscow is not on the agenda right now,” he said.
The Russian church “has never said that a meeting between the Patriarch and the Pope is impossible,” he said. “But all of these important events in inter-church relations must be preceded by serious work and we are busy doing it,” he said.
“Someone has probably gotten ahead of events,” Metropolitan Kirill said.
First, what's the source? Second Met. Kirill is denying that an early meeting is imminent. We know that! If people read before they jumped to conclusions, they would have also known that Met. Chrysotomos II was talking about long-term planning first, and then he spoke Patriarch Alexey II to meet the Pope in Cyprus and not in Moscow. So, of course, the meeting is neither imminent nor in Moscow. Duh!
Furthermore, Met. Kirill did not say it would not happen; rather, he even assured them that it's not impossible – which is a roundabout way of saying it's possible.
He merely said that one must prepare for such an event (which is the same thing Met. Chrysostomos II said) and that they are "busy doing it."
This story also has no semblance of any kind with the story by Lion in Winter that the meeting will not take place until the Pope "disavows the take of Orthodox churches in the Ukraine."
Where do these people come up with these things? I really wonder about the maturity, reading level ability and thinking capacity of people who spread rumors. Not to talk about their motives.
So, they are saying that the idea of an “early meeting” is out? Wonder what they mean by that? Sounds like they’ll be going to the scheduled meeting instead.