His Eminence met at the negotiation table today with Metropolitan Cyril of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, department head, Father Vsevolod said to Novosti. No comments on the talks came from the top of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Metropolitan Cyril and Cardinal Casper are official negotiators of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Holy See, respectively.
Two issues dominate their agenda. First, the Russian Orthodox Church objects to Roman Catholic missionary activities in Russia and other CIS countries, a majority of whose population belongs to Eastern Christendom or has Orthodoxy for ancestral confession. Second is Greek Catholic expansion in Ukraine, which badly harasses its Orthodox Church. Alarm has grown worse after Cardinal Casper's recent memorandum on prospects to establish the Kiev Patriarchate of the Greek Catholic Church.