Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, visited Romania last week, to receive an honorary degree from the “Babes-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca. During his Romanian visit, the Vatican representative met with Patriarch Teoctist, of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The presence of Cardinal Kasper in Romania aroused a good deal of interest in the local press. In a press conference held at the seat of the Greek-Catholic Eparchy of Cluj-Gherla, the cardinal emphasised that “Romania is a very important country in the ecumenical context: it’s a country that forms a bridge between East and West, an Orthodox and hence Eastern country, but at the same time also a Latin country”. The cardinal also recalled that Romania was “the first country with an Orthodox majority to have received the Holy Father”. “You have here he added the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek-Catholic Church, and the Churches of the Protestant tradition, so you have all the great Christian confessions. This presence represents a challenge for you, that of creating a model of peaceful communion that others may follow”. Referring to the process of the restitution by the Orthodox Church of the properties expropriated from the Greek-Catholic Church, the cardinal said that “the churches and the buildings essential for the current pastoral ministry must be returned; not all of them, but those that are needed for the liturgical celebrations and for the training of the clergy”. “This principle is supported by the general principle of religious freedom: each confession must have the chance to perform its own activity in a normal way, as also to train people for this activity”, he added, recalling the example of Orthodox Metropolitan Nicolae Corneanu, of Banat, who returned to the Greek-Catholic Church all the properties belonging to it in his administration.
