A step towards Reconciliation between Polish Catholics and Russian Orthodox Churches
August 14, 2012: The President of the Polish Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Jozef
Michalik and Kirill I, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia will sign a joint declaration
to both Polish and Russian people on 17th August. The signing will take
place during the first visit in Poland’s history of the head of the Russian Orthodox
Church.
"It is an unprecedented event," stressed the representatives of the
Catholic Church in Poland and of the Russian Orthodox Church. "The purpose of this
document is to resolve painful pages of Polish and Russian history," added Father
Jozef Kloch, spokesman of the Polish Episcopal Conference, "the important question
is to begin a dialogue that is born on the basis of the very Gospel of Christ."
It
is an important step that "in this phase we cannot but take," said Archbishop Michalik
to Poland’s Catholic Information Agency (KAI). "This event must not be treated in
political terms but as an indication of a path, a symbol and a sign of obedience to
the will of Christ, an important step on the path of forgiveness," said the president
of the Polish Episcopal Conference.
The message itself to the people of Russia
and Poland and the exchange of letters between the Polish and German bishops in 1965,
almost 50 years before this initiative, stem "from the Gospel," the Polish prelate
said.
The first important step towards Russo-Polish reconciliation was the
visit of a group of monks from a Russian monastery near Ostashkov to Jasna Gora,
the shrine of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa in September 2009. The delegation of
the Russian Orthodox Church was led by Arkadij Gubanow, Prior of the Orthodox Monastery
of Saint Nil at Stolobienskoje, region of Twer.
Archbishop Stanislaw Nowak
of Czestochowa and Father Izydor Matuszewski, Prior General of Pauline Fathers and
Custodian of the Shrine, also gave a copy of the Icon of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa
to the delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church.
"This Holy Icon of the Black
Madonna is a sign of our spiritual closeness, and also a symbol of Europe’s two lungs,
Eastern and Western, as the Servant of God John Paul II taught," said Archbishop Nowak
at the consigning of the icon. The Orthodox monks kept the copy of the image of the
Madonna in the Monastery of Saint Nil at Stolobienskoje. During World War II, it was
destined to a Soviet lager where more than 6,000 Polish soldiers were killed.
"In
this place, in our monastery, we must pray together, Russians and Poles, before the
Holy Icon of the Madonna of Czestochowa, to ask for peace and to pray for all those
who were killed," exhorted Arkadij Gubanow, prior of the Orthodox Monastery of Saint
Nil.
The signing of the declaration this Friday is seen as another step towards
reconciliation between the Churches of the East.