Catholic, Orthodox leaders to issue statement urging reconciliation
Friday, June 29, 2012
By Catholic News Service
WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- Catholic and Orthodox leaders from Poland and Russia will issue a joint statement committing their churches to fostering reconciliation between the two historically feuding countries.
Archbishop Henryk Muszynski, Poland's former Catholic primate, said the text could be compared to a famous 1965 declaration by Poland's Catholic bishops to their German counterparts; that document contained the words "we forgive and ask forgiveness."
However, he cautioned that Polish-Russian ties had not yet "matured sufficiently" for a comparable pledge of mutual forgiveness and said it was still "very difficult to reach a common position with Russians" on historical issues.
"As Poles, we speak clearly about our sufferings from two totalitarian systems -- the German Nazi and the Soviet communist -- but our Russian partners don't usually place them on the same level," the archbishop told the Polish Catholic news agency KAI.
http://www.uscatholic.org/news/2012/06/catholic-orthodox-leaders-issue-statement-urging-reconciliation
