An historic meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church is “getting closer every day,” Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign relations department, said in an interview.
He said the meeting between the head of the 1.2 billion member Roman Catholic Church and the head of Russian Orthodox Church – which counts some 165 million of the world’s 250 million Orthodox Christians – would take place in a “neutral” country, not in Moscow or the Vatican. Austria or Hungary were possibilities, he said.
Francis told reporters last year that he had sent word to Kirill that he was willing to meet the Russian patriarch “wherever you want, you call me and I’ll come”.