Putin to Meet Pope in Vatican for First Time in Four Years

(Bloomberg) --

President Vladimir Putin will be received by Pope Francis next month in the Vatican, the first meeting between the Russian leader and the head of the Roman Catholic Church in four years, the Kremlin said.

Putin will meet Francis on July 4, according to the Vatican. The meeting comes a day before the Pope is due to hold talks in Rome with leaders of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church to discuss the confict in that country and the “complex situation” following a schism involving the Orthodox Church.

This will be the third meeting between Putin and Francis, who last met in 2015. The leader of 1.2 billion Catholics also had an historic encounter with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba in 2016.

Ties have been strained for centuries between the two churches since the Great Schism of 1054 that split eastern and western Christianity over theological differences. Accusations by the Russian Orthodox Church of Catholic efforts to win converts following the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union prevented John Paul II from fulfilling his long-held wish to travel to Russia, and has blocked a Papal visit until now.

Until the Cuba meeting, the head of the Russian Church had never previously met with the Roman pontiff because of doctrinal differences between the churches and arguments over the leadership of Ukrainian Christians.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to elaborate when asked if Putin would invite Francis to make an historic visit to Russia. “You’re jumping ahead,” he told reporters on a conference call Thursday.

Amid tensions between Kiev and Moscow over the war with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church last year formally split from the Russian Orthodox Church. The establishment of an independent Ukrainian church was recognized by the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople.

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