Cardinal visits Orthodox Church of Belarus

(November 13, 2009) While meeting the Orthodox Church of Belarus, the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity has said that the real enemies of believers are secularism and godlessness, not members of other faiths. Cardinal Walter Kasper made the statement earlier this week in the Belarus capital, Minsk, while on a visit to the former Soviet republic at the invitation of Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk who is the head of the Belarusian Orthodox Church that is an autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, retired archbishop of Washington, joined Cardinal Kasper in a conference on Christian-Jewish dialogue that ended on Wednesday. The Vatican official stated: "We already became good friends as we are guided by the same objective: to work together in order to reach full communion of the Catholic and the Orthodox Church." In a meeting with the Catholic bishops' conference of Belarus, Cardinal Kasper stated: "We need to listen to other people, change our way of thinking and hearts. Only then will it be the true ecumenism." He described three columns of ecumenism, namely, dialogue with the Orthodox Church, dialogue with Protestant communities and working with new movements in the Church. "Our enemies today,” he said, “are not other confessions, but secularism and godlessness.” "This is why we need a joint answer to the challenges of the present,” he added.