"No step back. This meeting has never been fixed. Unfortunately we have to reckon with a journalism that does not help and that tries to work up scandals". This is how. Paolo Pezzi, archbishop of Moscow, dismisses the news relayed a few days ago about cancelling his meeting with the Patriarch Alexius II. "It is a meeting explains mgr. Pezzi to SIR that I had asked for. But it had no content, as some press agencies had said, listing a number of made-up issues. That’s why we didn’t think we had to answer, because that would have aroused more speculation". The archbishop explains how things went. "It’s a meeting I had asked for after Christmas, as the Patriarch had been willing to have it when he invited me to Christmas Mass, telling me, as published by L’Osservatore Romano and the Vatican Radio Station, he wanted to meet me for the good of God’s people who are entrusted to us. On these grounds, there’s a shared desire to meet. A desire that the Patriarch expressed. We had thought of meeting before Easter, but then, as we saw we would be near the Holy Week and I could not, then yes, we said we could meet later on". So "no step back". Dialogue mgr. Pezzi likes to specify "goes on and goes on successfully". (continued)” “
