Message from Russia

“The discussions and results of the plenary assembly of the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences (Ccee) in St. Petersburg were extremely positive”, declared Cardinal Peter Erdö, newly elected President of the Ccee for the period 2006-2011, during an interview with the Russian Catholic weekly “Svet Evangelia”. He added that he was very optimistic about the future of the Ccee. “As a young priest in a Hungary under Communist rule, I would never have imagined that one day I would come to Russia to take part in the plenary Assembly of European bishops. And now I’ve found here, in one of the largest cities of the former Soviet Union, a very active and rapidly growing Catholic community”, observed Cardinal Erdö. Worth emphasizing, among the various results of the plenary, is the leap forward achieved in ecumenical dialogue: in the past it seemed that the bishops of the Ccee were afraid of holding such an event in Russia to avoid damaging relations between Catholics and Orthodox, but 2006 was the year of harmonization. The unexpectedly warm and cordial letter sent by the Patriarch of Moscow and of all Russia Alexei II to the participants in the assembly explicitly demonstrates this, as did the numerous and authoritative delegation of the Patriarchate that attended the assembly. For us Russian Catholics this means that the St. Petersburg assembly marked a turning point in relations between Catholics and Orthodox within our country. It means we are invited to be equal partners in dialogue. Evaluating the results of the meeting, the general secretary of the Ccee, Monsignor Aldo Giordano, declared that Russia needs help in the Christian mission: it is “important, therefore, to understand that help is needed in the field of evangelization and that “we need to ask how we can collaborate in this task”.Another specific point discussed at St. Petersburg was Christian unity from the viewpoint of European unification. “Even the European Commission and the European Parliament listen to the voice of the Churches. Do they take it into consideration? In some cases, yes; in others they hear it amid the babble of other voices”, commented Noël Treanor, general secretary of the Commission of the episcopates of the European Community (Comece). “It’s not a question of making ourselves heard by the institutions, but of making ourselves heard with convincing arguments and rigorous analyses. The question also concerns the Churches: are we courageous and competent enough to fulfil our evangelizing mission in the modern society of the continent?”: Some challenges that the Christian world is having to face today lead the positions of our Churches increasingly to converge. They make us recall our common Christian roots and urge us to foster collaboration between Orthodox and Catholics, which is already active in many fields, such as “the witness of Christian moral values, the dialogue with the authorities at the national and European level, and the support for family life”, pointed out the Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin.