"If we get back to property disputes, we would harass negotiations, whose agenda contains much more essential matters, of spiritual and canonical purport," said Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, prominent on the Moscow Patriarchate Department of External Church Relations. Novosti had asked him to comment recent statements by the RCOR Synod press service and manager for public relations.
"If the two Churches arrive at eucharistic and canonical communion, and if they rejoin each other in a reunited Church, we expect to easily settle the issue between ourselves and start using the [disputed] church buildings together-provided either Party displays due goodwill," said Father Nikolai.
Tentative Church property redistribution was outside the agenda of a joint administration hoc commission. The Moscow Patriarchate and the RCOR established it, May last, in one of the most spectacular achievements of a visit by Metropolitan Laurus, RCOR Primate, to Moscow.
"We never regarded disputed property redistribution as a proviso to reinstate ecclesiastical communion," pointed out our interviewee.
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church called it, as early as last August, to withstand from filing property claim lawsuits against the RCOR. The Bishops' Synod of the RCOR reciprocated with a similar decision quite soon.
"Mutual property claims in whatever form, let alone litigation, are out of place now that we mean to reinstate Church unity. That's the point we both proceed from," said Father Nikolai.
The Moscow Patriarchate had been using the disputed plots in the Holy Land-Hebron and Jericho-for a fairly long time before practical reunion talks started, late in 2003, he emphasized.
"Our relations were very complicated throughout several decades. There were many points of painful mutual discontent. That was the context in which the property disputes proceeded. If we now turn to reconsideration of their results, we shall hardly see just at which point we ought to stop," our informant concluded.
RCOR spokesmen expressed dissatisfaction with its property status, and heated debates started in the media after a statement Alexis II the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia made while in conference with Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian National Authority leader, last month. As the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church said on the occasion, the Russian Church Mission to the Holy Land ought to juridically secure its rights for the Palestinian land plots it was historically owning.
The Russian Church in Exile, predecessor of the RCOR, was holding the Hebron plot before 1997, and the Jericho before 2000.
