By now anyone who knows me, knows that I have a thing for Eastern Orthodoxy, so I’ll tend to cover them more than most Catholics would. That being said this could be a HUGE event, because Pope Benedict has met with Patriarch Kirill several times before he became head of the Russian Church. He was even the Russian Churches representative to the World Council of Churches so maybe just maybe we’ll see some dialogue between two of Christianities largest Churches.
New leader seated in Russian Orthodox Church
President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin attend ceremony with clerics
MOSCOW – A new patriarch was seated on the throne of the Russian Orthodox Church Sunday, becoming the first leader of the world’s largest Orthodox church to take office after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Mikhail Klimentyev / EPA
Patriarch Kirill, a veteran church diplomat and cautious advocate of change, became the 16th to bear the title in a solemn ceremony at Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow’s most opulent church and itself a symbol of the rebirth of the Orthodox faith.
The original 19th-Century was dynamited under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1931, but rebuilt in the late 1990s following the collapse of the officially atheist Soviet Union….(more)
