Pope and Patriarch meet in Havana

havana - Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill greeted each Friday in Cuba. The two church leaders met at the airport in the Cuban capital Havana. In a thousand years, the leaders of the Roman Catholics and the Russian Orthodox conducted in person consultation.

The historic meeting began shortly after the arrival of the Pope in Havana. Call Topic is the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

The organization of this dialogue is certainly hesitated twenty years. Both leaders currently visiting Latin America. Earlier, Austria and Hungary were named as a neutral meeting place.

Since the collapse of the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century AD, the Christian church grew in the western part of Europe and in the East greatly. In 1054 was the final break and this church divorce is called the schism.

Oriental stream now consists of a series of Eastern Orthodox churches. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest of them. More than half of the estimated 250 to 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians, Russian Orthodox.