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Last Updated: 25 August 2017

CWN - In an interview for the 30th anniversary of his episcopal ordination, Metropolitan Hilarion Volokolamsk spoke about the importance of the sacred liturgy and liturgical music.

The prelate leads the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.

When he was 15, Metropolitan Hilarion was attending music school, but became “attracted by the very atmosphere of the liturgy” and entered monastic life. “Celebration of the liturgy is the spiritual core around which the whole life of a priest is built up,” he said. “It is the liturgy, the standing at God’s altar that gives you strength to do the rest.”

As a bishop, Metropolitan Hilarion has composed sacred music, including a Stabat Mater cantata. Reflecting on liturgical music, he said:Liturgical singing should be, above all, prayerful. It should not divert people from prayer but rather encourage it. I am very upset when a choir sings too loud or performs concert numbers. What is important in liturgy is integrity, which also concerns the singing of the church choir. I very much love the old Russian chanting. But I also love today’s four-voice polyphony, provided that they sing distinctly and devotionally.

References:

• Metropolitan Hilarion: I would not change this ministry for anything else (Moscow Patriarchate)

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Last Updated: 25 August 2017

CWN - A staff member of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for External Church Relations said that Ukraine is on the agenda of Cardinal Pietro Parolin’s upcoming meeting with Patriarch Kirill.

Father Stefan Igumnov told the Russian news agency Interfax that Ukraine “remains problematic in the relations between the two churches because of the occasional destructive activities of the Greek Catholics in Ukraine.”

References:

• Patriarch Kirill, Vatican state secretary to discuss Ukraine situation (Interfax)

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Last Updated: 19 August 2017

CNS - When he visits Moscow later this month, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, will not be making plans for a papal visit to Russia, according to a spokesman for the Russian Catholic bishops’ conference.

Father Iglor Kovalevsky told the Interfax news service that discussion of a papal visit would be “premature” when Cardinal Parolin meets with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. “The cardinal himself has stressed that this problem will not be discussed,” he reported.

Father Kovalevsky said that after their historic meeting in Cuba, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill might arrange another meeting in a different country. But he said that he considered it unlikely that the Pope would travel to Moscow, or the Russian Patriarch to Rome. “And there’s no need to rush things,” he added.

Several times during the pontificate of St. John Paul II, Vatican officials sought to arrange a papal visit to Russia. On each occasion, talks broke down when Orthodox officials insisted that conflicts between the two churches—in particular, disputes over the status of the Eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church—must be resolved before the Pope would be welcome.

Cardinal Parolin will be in Moscow from August 21 to 23. He is expected to meet privately with Patriarch Kirill and with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

References:

• Vatican secretary of state won't discuss prospects for pope's Russia visit in Moscow - Russian Catholic official (Interfax)

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Last Updated: 18 August 2017

Cindy Wooden | CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Vatican II urged a recovery of the Eastern Catholic traditions, liturgy and spirituality. But, especially for Eastern Catholics living far from their churches' homelands, uprooting vestiges of the "Latinization" can prove difficult.

ROME - The Vatican is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, an office that supports the Eastern Catholic churches and strives to ensure that the universal Catholic Church treasures its diversity, including in liturgy, spirituality and even canon law.

Coincidentally established five months before the Russian Revolution, the congregation continually has had to face the real persecution and threatened existence of some of the Eastern churches it was founded to fortify.

Until 1989-90, many of the Byzantine Catholic churches - including, notably, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the largest of all the Eastern churches - were either outlawed or severely repressed by the communist governments of Eastern Europe, said Archbishop Cyril Vasil, a member of the Slovak Catholic Church and secretary of the congregation.

No sooner had the Soviet bloc disintegrated and once-persecuted churches begun to flourish, then the first Gulf War broke out. And then there was the invasion of Iraq. And the turmoil of the Arab Spring across North Africa. Then the war in Syria. And Israeli-Palestinian tensions continue. The Chaldean, Syriac Catholic, Coptic Catholic, Melkite and Maronite churches have paid a high price.

“In all of this, the Eastern churches suffer the most because they find themselves crushed in the struggle between bigger powers, both local and global,” Vasil said in mid-August. Even those conflicts that are not taking direct aim at Christians in the Middle East make life extremely difficult for them, and so many decide to seek a more peaceful life for themselves and their families outside the region.

One impact of the “exodus,” he said, is the greater globalization of the Catholic Church. While 100 years ago, when the Congregation for Eastern Churches was established, only a few Eastern churches had eparchies - dioceses - outside their traditional homelands, today they can be found in Australia, North and South America and scattered across Western Europe.

Vasil said in Sweden today, a third of the Catholics are Chaldeans or Armenians, adding that in countries like Belgium and Holland, where Catholicism has suffered a decline, communities are reborn with the arrival of new Christians, “which is a reminder of the importance of immigrants bringing their faith with them.”

In countries like Italy, where thousands of Ukrainians and Romanians have come to work, they add ritual diversity to the expressions of Catholicism already found there, he said.

The growing movement of people around the globe means that part of the congregation’s job is to work with the Latin-rite bishops and dioceses, “sensitizing church public opinion” to the existence, heritage, needs and gifts of the Eastern Catholics moving into their communities, the archbishop said. Where an Eastern Catholic hierarchy has not been established, the local Latin-rite bishop has a responsibility “to accept, welcome and give respectful support to the Eastern Catholics” as their communities grow and become more stable.

The idea, Vasil said, is to help the local Latin-rite bishop seriously ask himself, “How can I help them free themselves of me and get their own bishop?”

Although it has only 26 employees - counting the prefect, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, and the receptionist - the Congregation for Eastern Churches works with 23 Eastern Catholic churches and communities, fulfilling the same tasks that for Latin-rite Catholics fall to the congregations for bishops, clergy, religious, divine worship, and education.

It supports the Pontifical Oriental Institute, which offers advanced degrees in Eastern Christian liturgy, spirituality and canon law. And it also coordinates the work of a funding network known by the Italian acronym ROACO; the U.S.-based Catholic Near East Welfare Association and Pontifical Mission for Palestine are part of that network.

Click to read the full strory at cruxnow.com.

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Last Updated: 17 August 2017

CWN - Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan of Antioch said that Western support for “moderate” Syrian rebel factions has caused the devastation of the country.

“I can tell you, we’ve been not only abandoned by the Western countries, but even we have been betrayed,” the Syrian prelate told the Southern Cross, the newspaper of the San Diego diocese. He charged that Western leaders have ignored the suffering of Christians, who are being driven from the country by the violence.

Patriarch Ignace dismissed the claim that the US and other countries are backing “moderate” Muslim forces in the Syrian conflict. No such forces exist, he said; “It’s a lie.”

References:

• Syriac Catholic patriarch says West has ‘betrayed’ Christian minorities (CNS)

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Last Updated: 17 August 2017

ugcc.org.ua - All are invited to join Metropolitan-Archbishop Stefan Soroka and clergy on a Pilgrimage at the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Centralia, Pa. on Sunday, August 27th. The pilgrimage begins at 12:00 noon with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy with Archbishop Stefan as the main celebrant. There will be a Living Rosary prayed at 2:00 PM before the historic and jeweled 18th century copy of the Icon of Our Lady of Pochaiv. At 3:00 PM Akafist to the Mother of God will be sung. At 4:30 PM a candlelight procession to the church for the celebration of a Moleben to the Mother of God with Metropolitan Stefan Soroka as main celebrant and homilist. At the conclusion of the Moleben, prayers for healing and the anointing with holy oils for the healing of soul and body will take place. Pilgrims will have an opportunity to venerate the icon and relics of Blessed Martyr Bishop Mykola Charnetsky, C.Ss.R., the healer of souls.