On 29 November, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, president of the Department of External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow, received Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, who had arrived in the Russian capital to present the Russian translation of the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church. During the meeting says a press release put out by the Patriarchate of Moscow “the two prelates spoke of the tasks and challenges that contemporary society poses to the Christian world and emphasized that the two Churches have an identical position on many questions relating to the life of society, international relations and ethics”. The representatives of the two Churches then discussed a series of specific questions in which the Orthodox and Catholic Churches can work together. In an interview given to the Interfax press agency, the vice-president of the External Relations Department of the Patriarchate, Father Vsevolod Tchaplin, expressed the hope for closer collaboration between the two Churches especially in the field of social thought and its application to everyday life. “Social thought said Father Tchaplin is undoubtedly the field in which the two Churches register the closest proximity”, in particular on questions relating to peace, social ethics, the family and justice. “In this field said Father Tchaplin our Churches have a lot in common”.
