Responding to Pope Francis’s stated desire to meet with Patriarch Kirill whenever the Russian prelate is ready, a spokesman for the Moscow patriarchate criticized the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest of the Eastern Catholic churches in full communion with the Holy See.
Referring to the 2013-14 Ukrainian crisis, which has witnessed the ouster of a pro-Russian president and subsequent pro-Russian unrest in eastern Ukraine and Russian military intervention, Deacon Alexander Volkov told the Interfax news agency that “we have to acknowledge once again that the line pursued by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is a significant factor thwarting normal development of the relations between the churches.”
“We would like to hope that the voice of our church will be heard and the involvement of the Greek Catholics in the political conflict in Ukraine will decrease, thereby creating favorable conditions for maintaining a proper dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, including on the subject of a possible meeting between the Patriarch and the Pope,” he added.