What has changed in 1,000 years for Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox church to meet in Havana, Cuba? Apparently, a lot. It is not as though the two called each other over the phone and said, ‘let’s meet in Havana’. This meeting is decades in the making and there are at least three occasions when it nearly happened “ once during the papacy of Pope John Paul II and twice under Pope Benedict XIV.
Presently, the common ground is terrorism and genocide of Christians in the Middle-East, North and Central Africa. It is this mass killings that facilitated the meeting. Also, since the Russian Orthodox church is aligned with the government, this meet would not have taken place without a nudge from Vladimir Putin who desperately needs a foreign relations success. A third possible reason could be the fall from grace of political systems that have jettisoned human values and morals on the altar of expediency. The meeting is enveloped in hope and the faithful from both churches are awaiting a historical declaration. It would be supremely disappointing if nothing were to happen in Havana.
