MOSCOW, May 18 (RIA Novosti) - It would be awkward for Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, to meet the Pope, argues Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany, Russian Orthodox Church Abroad commission head for negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate.
"Such a meeting will be out of place, as I see it. The confrontation of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches is too serious for it now, what with Catholic proselytising in Ukraine and elsewhere in the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church," he said to a news conference in Moscow. It came as summing up negotiations of Alexis II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, with Metropolitan Laurus, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
"The Roman Catholic Church is perpetrating aggressive policies, while a meeting would appear to come in its forgiveness.
"There are burning issues whose settlement has not yet taken start, while a meeting ought not to come before they are settled," argued the Archbishop.
