Holy Synod regards unia as running sore in Orthodox-Catholic relations

At its session on April 16, 2016 in St. Petersburg, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church heard a report of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia on his visit to Latin America (Minutes No. 2).

Assessing the results of His Holiness’s meeting with Pope Francis of Rome, which took part during his visit and which resulted in signing a Joint Statement, the Holy Synod made special reference to the leaders’ statement that “the past method of ‘uniatism’ understood as the union of one community to the other, separating it from its Church, is not the way to re–establish unity”.

At the same time, the Holy Synod expressed regret at the reaction of the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to these words and the statement as a whole.

The Holy Synod stressed that unia remains a running sore in the Orthodox-Catholic relations and supported the call to reconciliation between the Orthodox and the Creek Catholics in Ukraine and to a search for mutually acceptable forms of co-existence voiced in the statement of the Patriarch of Moscow and the Pope of Rome.

Source: Moscow Patriarchate