Russian Orthodox invite top Vatican officials to July world summit

Published: 2006-06-13

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow has invited top Vatican officials as well as the bishop of western Siberia to attend a World Summit of Religious Leaders July 3-5 in Russia's capital. Through its interreligious council, the Moscow Patriarchate was organizing the initiative to bring together top religious leaders from a variety of spiritual traditions to discuss how world religions could help give a moral response to the challenges the world is facing. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow invited Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the pontifical councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue; Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; and Bishop Joseph Werth of Russia's Novosibirsk-based Transfiguration Diocese. The inclusion of Bishop Werth, a Russian citizen born in Kazakhstan, signaled an important gesture of rapprochement on the part of the patriarchate toward the Vatican.

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