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Letter #19, 2017: After Fatima...[2017-05-15][Engleză]May 15, 2017, Monday"I saw that American leaders wanted to cooperate with Russia.The influential Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Oxford-educated "Foreign Minister" of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church, in an interview published today on the website of the Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate. The interview follows Hilarion's four-day trip to Washington D.C. to participate in a "World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense of Persecuted Christians" (link), a Christian religious conference sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, an organization founded by the famous American evangelist and preacher Billy Graham and now led by his son, Franklin Graham. On the margins of the conference, on May 11, Hilarion had a private meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence (link) (Below, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev meets with American Vice President Mike Pence in Washington D.C. on the margins of the "World Summit of Christian Leaders in Defense of Persecuted Christians." The two also had a brief private meeting in a separate place. Hilarion, in an interview published below, says he will refer the contents of his meeting with Pence to Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and that Kirill, if Kirill deems the contents important enough, will refer them directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin) "We need one consolidated coalition." Hilarion's summary of the goal of a proposed "alliance" between Russia and the United States, and other powers, specifically against the horrors of terrorism, in which violence is used to sow fear among civilian populations (see the interview below) (Below, Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and, like his father, a leading American Protestant Evangelical, was chief organizer of the conference just held in Washington attended by Metropolitan Hilarion. In this photo, Franklin is shown meeting in 2015 in Russia with Russian President Vladimir Putin) Dangerous Infatuation or Useful Strategic Alliance? A number of American Christian evangelicals seem to have been persuaded to embark on a surprising new "romance" with the post-Soviet religious and political leadership of Vladimir Putin's Russia. And this has occurred precisely at the moment when Russia is being ferociously attacked daily, even hourly, in much of the mainstream American media. This media, and its supporters in politics, business and academia, argue that Putin's Russia is a powerful, technologically ingenious, and geopolitically dangerous threat to the US, and so needs to be confronted, countered and contained. But some very influential Protestant evangelicals see things differently. (Above, Metropolitan Hilarion meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence this past week, with Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, between them. In his private life, Pence is an evangelical, but he was born and raised Catholic, and still refers to himself as an "evangelical Catholic." One article puts it this way: "One of the more publicly shared accounts of Pences transition from a Catholic youth minister who wanted to be a priest to an evangelical megachurch member came in 1994. Thats when he told the Indianapolis Business Journal about an intense period of religious searching that he underwent in college. I made a commitment to Christ, Pence said, speaking of the late 1970s. Im a born-again, evangelical Catholic. link) This opens up a series of possibilities, of questions, which have been little-asked in recent months... (continued below) =========================== JOIN DR. ROBERT MOYNIHAN FOR A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME PILGRIMAGE JUNE 16-25, 2017 LONDON AND OXFORD, ENGLAND Join me for Mass in the prison cell of St. Thomas More in the Tower of London on St. Thomas More's Feast Day, June 22! A pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Thomas More and Blessed John Henry Newman. Don't delay: only 6 places left! âPilgrimages@InsideTheVatican.com +1.202.536.4555 ===================== (continued from above) What could be the consequences of this "American Evangelical-Russian Orthodox" rapprochement for the political balance-of-power inside the United States, even inside the evidently unstable coalition which elected Donald Trump president in November? What influence could it have on the balance of political power inside Russia? What mighty be Rome's view, Pope Francis' view, of this rapprochement? What might the Europeans think of it? And the Chinese? And the Islamic world? To what extent is this a serious "romance," and to what extant is it merely a brief "infatuation" which will soon grow cold? To what extent are any of the partners to this relationship themselves being manipulated by hidden forces which have their own agenda? And what could that agenda be? Impossible questions to fully answer right now. Only time will enable us to give fuller answers than we presently have. But, at the very least, this "romance" adds an interesting element into the mix of factors which must be analyzed when looking at the choices facing Pope Francis and the Catholic Church, precisely at the moment when the Church -- in light of the Fatima prophecy, re-echoed worldwide in recent days because of the Pope's trip to Fatima on Friday and Saturday -- seeks to understand what it might mean that (as the "woman clothed in light" told the three shepherd children) "in the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph" and "Russia will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world." My own conviction is that the faith which unites Catholic and Orthodox Christians -- a faith which constituted them as a single, undivided Christian Church for more than 1,000 years, from the foundation of the Church in the first century up until the "Great Schism" of 1054 A.D. -- still could, and should, reunite them today, after the passage of almost another 1,000 years. It is time. And this long hoped-for reunion -- as difficult and complicated as it may be given many cultural, political and theological obstacles -- will, I believe, soon come to pass. And when it does, it is my hope that it will bring with it the fruits of a just peace for all mankind -- a "period of peace," as the Fatima message defines it. This is one of the reasons behind writing and sending out these letters: the hope that these letters may play some positive role in assisting the effort to bring Christian unity worldwide, and, at the same time, and in part as a result of this reunion, to help bring peace where there is the threat -- and even the reality -- of conflict and war. So that is one central goal behind these letters: to help in some modest but real way the cause of peace, even, and perhaps most of all, when the threat of war looms large. A peace which is not in any way a surrender of any freedom or of any justice, but a peace in which freedom is protected and secured, through discussion, negotiation and with reason, a peace in which justice shines forth all the more brightly for having been trampled under by every form of injustice. The news of Hilarion's May 11 meeting with Pence was broken by Time magazine reporter Elizabeth Dias. She wrote: Vice President Mike Pence Met Privately With Top Russian Cleric By Elizabeth Dias Updated: May 12, 2017 8:55 AM ET | Originally published: May 11, 2017 A top cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church and ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin met privately with Vice President Mike Pence Thursday morning and urged the U.S. to cooperate with Russia to combat terrorism in the Middle East. Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Moscow, who chairs the Russian Orthodox Churchs external relations department, spoke with Pence backstage at evangelist Franklin Grahams Washington summit on religious violence against Christians. It is only one united, international anti-terrorist coalition which can combat terrorism and win, Hilarion told TIME during an interview in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in D.C., a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The two countries should put these political differences aside. A White House spokesman confirmed Pence's meeting with Hilarion and said the cleric's comments also reflected President Trump's views. Additional religious leaders were also present backstage. Hilarion says that after talking with Pence, he feels very positive about the future of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia... [For the complete Time article, go here.] ================= Kirill "Will Convey This Information To Russian Leaders" Two new postings on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate give us Moscow's view of the latest developments in the warming relationship between the Russian Orthodox and America's Protestant Evangelical communities. The first is a summary of an interview given to Interfax (the Russian Orthodox website) by Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion, the "Foreign Minister" of the Russian Orthodox Church, summing up the events of these recent days. 15 May 2017, 12:08 Moscow Patriarchate is optimistic about the prospects of Russian-American dialogue Moscow, May 15, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church is optimistic about the progress of the dialogue between Russia and the United States on key international issues. Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 781, Ultimul acces: 2026-08-02 21:34:43
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