This story about the Russian Orthodox using empty and underused Roman Catholic Churches in Italy is interesting. Particularly given the hostility shown by Orthodox to the RC on many of the blogs out there.

I find it interesting in the last paragraph which states that an Orthodox church will be opened in Cyprus...

What's the big deal? Cyprus has always been Orthodox.

How does this work? I thought Cyprus already had its own autocephalous Church. Is this another potential problem like the one between the Church of Jerusalem and the Romanian Orthodox Church that resulted in a break of ecclesiastical communion?

Bob

It seems that as long it is for their own benefit, it will be ok for them? Will they allow Catholic to use theirs?

I am ambivalent toward this development. I am learning to make friends with ambivalence because it might sometimes be a condition for my psychological/spiritual survival. On the one hand, I think, "maybe the Orthodox will put the churches to better, more effective use than the Latins did for spreading the Good News of Christ." I hope so, anyway.

But I would like to see the Orthodox be more hospitable toward us Catholics (incl. the Latins).

It does not reassure (or particularly surprise) me to learn there may very well be a pro-Russian political agenda behind all this. I say that altho I have relatives living in Russia, I'm still very much a Lithuanian ethnic; and history shows Russia has never meant anything good for Lithuania.

It's OK. When Lithuania was the Big Dog in the East, it never meant anything good for Russia, either.

Pray tell - how is it EVER "OK" for one nation to oppress another?

Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis in killing of Jews was definitely not "OK". Read abt. it in the excellent and credible book by Yaffa Eliach, "Once There Was a World: A 900-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok".

On the other hand, check out http://www.genocid.lt/

But this is a digression. I'd like to know more about Orthodox efforts to re-evangelise secular Western Europe.

I hope that this thread gets back on topic quickly. "Orthodox using Roman Catholic Churches in Italy" looks like a good topic for discussion.

Ray
www.theologyincolor.com

Actually, Sielos, I was speaking about the 17th century, when the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania was significantly larger than Russia and occupied territory all the way to the gates of Moscow.

As for the Orthodox being inhospitable to Catholics, never been my experience, and what happens in Eastern Europe is largely conditioned by the unfortunate history of those lands.

What Ray said! Thank you, Ray.

Many years,

Neil

In 2002, Pope Blessed John Paul II gave the Church of Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi to the Bulgarian Orthodox and is now home to the Bulgarian Orthodox parish of Ss Cyril and Methodius.

While in Rome last year, we stayed in a hotel not too far from the Trevi Fountain and visited the church, An iconostasis had been installed just in front of the communion rail. the priest was quite friendly when I identified myself as a Byzantine Catholic deacon. He asked if I was Ukranian Catholic from Argentina. LOL

The EU's free movement policy has led to widespread migrations from Eastern Europe in search of employment, as a result of which there are now numerous Eastern Orthodox communities in Western Europe. It is a reasonable and charitable act on the part of Pope Benedict to allow these people, who wish to establish worship communities of their own, to utilize churches which the peoples of Western Europe have, by and large, either abandoned or turned into virtual museums. On a couple Sundays in Brussels last year, I found more people attending Liturgy in the three Orthodox communities I was able to locate, than in all the many RC churches within walking distance of my hotel near the old city--most of which were, in fact, locked. I would rather see them used for the greater glory of God by the Orthodox than see them empty and slowly crumbling into dust.

Moscow and other Eastern European countries have not, in general, objected to the Roman Catholics building churches in their cities. Eastern Catholics are another matter, but one, again, mired in unfortunate history. The Orthodox are not really in a position to just give a church to the RCs who might need one--due to decades of communist rule, many churches were demolished, others were profaned, and almost all were allowed to decay into ruin. As a result, in most places the Orthodox don't have any spare churches to lend, but rather are either restoring the ones that they have and rebuilding the ones that were lost.

In any case, there is no great migration of workers from west to east. Living standards in Eastern Europe are still significantly lower than those in the West, and aside from Western managerial and technical workers assigned to those places by Western companies, there aren't too many people who would be clamoring for a new church. The Western Christian communities of Eastern Europe represent mostly those populations who either migrated east during the imperial period, or were transferred to the East by Stalin. And the majority of those are Protestants, anyway.