MOSCOW, Russia - Russia's Orthodox patriarch is only willing to meet with Pope John Paul II if there are first assurances a meeting would bring progress in the disputes between the churches, a senior Orthodox cleric said Thursday.
In the Russian Orthodox Church's first live Internet question-and-answer session, Metropolitan Kirill praised the freedoms the church has won in the decade since the collapse of Soviet atheism, but bemoaned schisms with Orthodox leaders in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Estonia, Moldova and in America.
Kirill, sitting between frescoed columns in Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral as he answered queries, indicated Orthodox leaders remain resistant to the pope's efforts to mend the nearly 1,000-year-old rift between their churches.
``The patriarch says he's ready to meet with the pope ... but the meeting should bring real results,'' said Kirill, the church's chief of foreign relations. Otherwise, he said, the meeting would become a media show producing merely ``illusions of conciliation.''
In a key theme of his papacy, John Paul has visited several Orthodox countries in recent years and has long sought a meeting with Russian Patriarch Alexy II. But Alexy has balked, citing disputes over church property and Catholic missionary activities in traditionally Orthodox areas.
``There's probably no other religious group with whom we have tried so hard to find common language,'' he said, dismissing criticism that the Orthodox Church is being stubborn and isolationist in its relations with the Catholics. ``There is no exit from dialogue.''
Turning to another sore spot in Orthodox foreign relations, Kirill said the Russian patriarch was unlikely to visit Ukraine for celebrations marking its 10th anniversary of independence this month, because of disputes with a splinter church there.
``The arrival of the patriarch should without doubt be used for overcoming those divides,'' he said. ``But can Ukraine fully use the potential of a patriarchal visit for healing the situation? There are large doubts.''
Asked about this week's 10th anniversary of the hard-line coup attempt that crippled the Soviet Union, Kirill said, ``So much happened over these 10 years that we couldn't have dreamed of.
The Orthodox Church has regained much of its influence over Russian society since 1991, and successfully lobbied parliament to pass a controversial 1997 religion law that restricts religious groups outside Orthodoxy, Islam and Judaism.