The Joint Declaration of Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill (Russian: Совместная декларация Папы Франциска и Патриарха Кирилла) also known as the Havana Declaration (Russian: Гаванская декларация) was issued following the first meeting in February 2016 between Pope Francis, who, as the Bishop of Rome, was the pontiff of the Catholic Church, and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus', Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches. This was the first time leaders of the Catholic Church and the Moscow Patriarchate had met. While the meeting was also seen as a symbolic moment in the history of relations between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches as a community, which had split in the Great Schism of 1054, centuries before the Moscow Patriarchate was constituted, it was not expected to lead to any immediate rapprochement between them.
The 30-point declaration contains a joint call by the two church primates to end the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and wars in the region, expressing their hope that the meeting might contribute to the re-establishment of Christian unity between the two churches. A range of other issues are mentioned in the declaration, including atheism, secularism, capitalism, consumerism, economic and social inequality, migrants and refugees, the importance of heterosexual marriage and the family, and concerns relating to abortion and euthanasia.
According to the ROC leadership's public statements made before and after the Havana meeting, while the document stresses that both churches share the tradition of the first millennium of Christianity, the discussion during the meeting did not attempt to mend any of the persisting doctrinal and ecclesiastical differences between the two churches.Интервью Святейшего Патриарха Кирилла по итогам визита в страны Латинской Америки "мы не обсуждали ни одного богословского вопроса. Хорошо это или плохо – другой разговор, но богословие мы не обсуждали [...] Цель встречи никак не была связана с продвижением каких-то богословских соглашений." The Declaration however includes statements about Eastern Catholic Churches in line with the Balamand declaration as well as the Russo-Ukrainian war. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church expressed disappointment, and Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate criticised the latter.
Background
The Great Schism of 1054 split Christianity between Greek East and Latin West. Attempts were made over the subsequent centuries to heal the rift, such as the 1274 Second Council of Lyon and the 1439 Council of Florence, but these failed. More recent attempts to foster closer relations between the churches included the Catholic–Orthodox Joint Declaration of 1965 following the 1964 meeting between Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople in Jerusalem. Following that meeting and declaration, a number of meetings, visits and symbolic events had taken place involving Catholic and Orthodox leaders (including visits by Pope John Paul II, and especially between several popes and Bartholomew I of Constantinople), but never a meeting between a Pope and a leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. The first time a Pope visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country was in 1999 when Pope John Paul II visited Romania. Since 1980, regular plenary sessions of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, the latter being led by the Church of Constantinople, had been held.
Within the communion of the autocephalous (administratively independent) local (national) churches of Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople – based in what is now Turkey's Istanbul – is recognized as the bishop who enjoys primus inter pares status, albeit having no direct administrative powers over the other Orthodox churches. The Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) which became autocephalous near the end of the 16th century is considered the largest denomination of the local Orthodox churches; it has close ties with the Russian state, thus according a geopolitical significance to a meeting of its Patriarch with a pope. The decentralised nature of Orthodoxy meant that such meetings could not have direct significance for pan-Orthodox issues. Two weeks earlier, the leaders of the Orthodox churches, including Kirill, met in Chambésy, Switzerland, to make final preparations for a historic Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, rescheduled for June 2016.
According to the ROC, it began a bilateral dialogue with the Catholic Church in 1967, and the ROC began a theological dialogue with the Catholic Church in 1979. Attempts had previously been made to arrange a meeting between a pope and a Russian patriarch, but these attempts had failed. Tensions had risen between the churches after the fall of Communism as the Churches "moved to pick up the pieces". Negotiations had been held in the 1990s for a possible meeting between Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and Pope John Paul II. According to the United States Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the two churches established a joint working group, which met in May and September 2004, to discuss specific concerns. Representatives of both churches reported that the working group contributed to an improved atmosphere. In an August 2004 gesture of reconciliation, John Paul II presented an 18th-century copy of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan to Alexy II. In April 2005, John Paul II died, and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected as Pope Benedict XVI. In April 2005, ROC Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, as chairman of the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, proposed "a European Catholic–Orthodox Alliance". In May 2005, Cardinal Walter Kasper proposed convoking "a synod of reconciliation" on the 1,000th anniversary of the Council of Bari in 2098, and proposed an alliance with Orthodox and Protestants against secularism. This alliance would "help one another mutually in favor of common values, of a culture of life, of the dignity of the person, of solidarity and social justice, of peace and the safeguarding of creation," according to Kasper. In May, then-Metropolitan Kirill met with Benedict XVI in the Vatican, and they highlighted their commitment to working cooperatively. The possibility of a meeting of Kirill (elected Patriarch in 2009) with Benedict XVI had been explored prior to Benedict's retirement in March 2013, and Benedict met the future Patriarch Kirill in Rome in 2006 when Kirill was chairman of the Department of External Church Relations for the Moscow Patriarchate.
Meeting in Havana
Two years of secretive planning and months of detailed negotiation were necessary to arrange the meeting between Francis and Kirill. Francis was willing to meet Kirill, having said in November 2014: "I'll go wherever you want. You call me and I'll go." Agreement from the Russian Orthodox side was complicated by the church's close ties to the Russian state, which had recently annexed Crimea and invaded Donbas, both part of Ukraine. The pre-meeting announcement from the Moscow Patriarchate stated that they had agreed to "put aside internal disagreements" to focus on the plight of Christians being persecuted. Cuba, a significant location to both sides, provided the requirements for a neutral meeting place as neither Rome nor Moscow would have been suitable. The meeting, made possible by the timing of both leaders' visits to the region, was announced a week in advance on 5 February 2016.
The meeting took place on 12 February 2016 in a VIP room at José Martí International Airport near Havana, Cuba. Francis arrived at 2 pm local time, and the two leaders embraced and kissed. A 2-hour private meeting was followed by the signing of their joint declaration, which had been prepared in advance. Kirill was in Havana on an official visit as part of a regional tour, including visits to Brazil and Paraguay. Francis' airplane arrived at the airport on his way to his tour of Mexico.
Cuban dignitaries attending the occasion included President Raúl Castro, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino (Archbishop of San Cristóbal de la Habana) and Archbishop (of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba). The meeting itself was held in a private room and attended by translators and by the aides of the two leaders, in addition to Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations for the Moscow Patriarchate.
At the end of the meeting, there was an exchange of gifts. Francis gave Kirill a chalice as well as a reliquary of the 9th-century Saint Cyril (buried in Rome). Kirill gave Francis a copy of the icon of the Our Lady of Kazan. Other presents exchanged were a Spanish-language translation of Kirill's book Freedom and Responsibility (2011) and a Russian-language translation of Francis's encyclical Laudato si' (2015).
Speaking to news media several days after the meeting, Patriarch Kirill said, citing as the reason "powerful forces" opposing such meeting (apart from the fearful Orthodox faithful), that the meeting had had to be prepared in strict secrecy; he also stressed that not a single theological issue had been discussed.Встреча с понтификом готовилась втайне, рассказал патриарх Кирилл NEWSru, 24 February 2016: "Предстоятель РПЦ назвал ожидаемым, что у верующих в связи с его встречей с папой Франциском возникли опасения по поводу того, "не будет ли как-то деформирована доктрина, не будет ли каких-то изменений в литургической жизни, в пастырских подходах". Он констатировал, что на встрече не обсуждалось ни одного богословского вопроса, и "не нужно ничего бояться"."Интервью Святейшего Патриарха Кирилла по итогам визита в страны Латинской Америки, The ROC official website, 22 February 2016: "— А Вас отговаривали от встречи или нет? – Меня никто не отговоривал, потому что никто не знал. Об этой встрече знали пять человек, не буду называть их святые имена. Почему было так? Потому что подготовить такую встречу в условиях гласности невозможно – слишком много противников. И даже не тех наших милых и добрых православных людей, которые считают, что есть какая-то опасность в самой встрече, – есть мощные силы, которые этого не очень хотят. Поэтому надо было спокойно и в тишине ее готовить, что мы и сделали."
Joint declaration The joint declaration was published by the Holy See in Italian, Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Arabic. The Russian Orthodox Church published it in Russian, English, Italian, French, Spanish, and Ukrainian. It consisted of 30 numbered sections on a range of topics.
The first section of the declaration gives thanks for this meeting, "the first in history", and refers to the leaders as "brothers in the Christian faith". Sections 2 and 3 refer to their meeting place of Cuba as "the crossroads of North and South, East and West", and expressed joy at the growth of Christianity in Latin America. Sections 4–6 expresses their views on their shared spiritual tradition ("the first millennium of Christianity") and their hopes that their meeting "may contribute to the re-establishment of this unity willed by God".