Benedict XVI, Putin, and the Future of Russia

Deal Hudson

The meeting yesterday between Benedict XVI and Vladimir Putin is another attempt to ease relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church, and specifically the head of the the Russian church, Patriarch Alexiy II.

It was Alexiy II who blocked John Paul II from visiting Russia, which was perhaps the greatest personal disappointment of his papacy.

In 2002 I met with the patriarch's staff in Moscow as part of a team building a public maternity clinic. This clinic -- named after my friend Tom Murray of Sandusky, Ohio -- would eventually become the only abortion-free maternity clinic in Russia.  (Tom is a trial lawyer, and a pro-life Democrat.)

We sought a meeting with Russian Orthodox leadership in the hope of securing their moral support.  They were willing to get behind the project, they told us, as "long as it was not Roman Catholic." (Everyone on the American side of the table was RC.)  It was clear they were not interested in anything that might offer Roman Catholics the opportunity to make converts, which, in fact, was not our intent.

The clinic was built, and is now fully operative, providing a level of maternity care formerly only available to the wealthiest Russians.  But the experience was an eye-opener, a brief glimpse into the kind of suspicion that Orthodox leadership has toward the Vatican.

I have only been to Russia twice, each time I spent a week in Moscow working on the clinic project.  My impression, as superficial as it might be, is that it takes a leader like Putin to keep a grip on the country. I don't mean this as praise, but as a simple observation. 

My other observation is that leaders like Putin are keeping the lid on another kind of change, a spiritual revival that will one day explode like a volcano. 

The explosion of 90 years ago defined the major struggle of the twentieth century, who knows when the next one will come or what age it will define.  I'm very pleased that Benedict XVI is continuing to knock at the door of Alexiy II.