(Vatican Radio) The chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel is due to meet Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Russia for the first time since 2015. Tuesday's gathering comes at a time of troubled bilateral relations over the war in Syria and Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.Listen to Stefan Bos' report: The leaders meet at Putin's summer residence in Sochi to see if they can overcome the biggest tensions between them since the end of the Cold War.However that is difficult as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Putin remain divided over Russia's annexation of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014. Germany was a driving force behind the European Unionsanctions imposed in response.Merkel wants Russia to seek an end to the conflict in Ukraine by using its influence on pro-Russian separatists. The West has accused Russia of supporting the rebels with weapons and troops in the fighting that killed some 10,000 people, charges Russi...
(Vatican Radio) The chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel is due to meet Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Russia for the first time since 2015. Tuesday's gathering comes at a time of troubled bilateral relations over the war in Syria and Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.
Listen to Stefan Bos' report:
The leaders meet at Putin's summer residence in Sochi to see if they can overcome the biggest tensions between them since the end of the Cold War.
However that is difficult as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Putin remain divided over Russia's annexation of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014. Germany was a driving force behind the European Union
sanctions imposed in response.
Merkel wants Russia to seek an end to the conflict in Ukraine by using its influence on pro-Russian separatists. The West has accused Russia of supporting the rebels with weapons and troops in the fighting that killed some 10,000 people, charges Russia
denies.
SEEKING COOPERATION
However Merkel also needs Moscow's cooperation to bring peace to Syria. That is difficult as Moscow supports Syrian President Bashar Assad and his forces, while the West opposes him.
Yet President Putin equally needs Merkel's support in to lift the EU's sanctions and he is also keen to hear her opinion of US President Donald Trump, whom she recently met.
They spoke frequently before the breakdown in communications since 2014. It helps that Merkel speaks Russian, having grown up in communist East Germany, while Putin speaks German, from his years working for the secret service KGB in Dresden in the 1980s.
But despite their language skills both sides have downplayed the prospect of major breakthroughs during their meeting in Sochi.
Putin will later meet Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, amid concerns in the West over what it views as his autocratic style.
Archbishop Julian Porteous. / Credit: Archdiocese of HobartCNA Newsroom, May 14, 2024 / 15:22 pm (CNA).An Australian archbishop has been criticized for his pastoral letter addressing human dignity and legislative challenges to religious and parental freedoms.Archbishop Julian Porteous of Hobart released the four-page document titled "We Are Salt to the Earth" on May 2. The pastoral letter was sent to Catholic parishes and schools in the Tasmanian archdiocese.In the letter, Porteous reiterated the Church's teaching on the complementarity of the sexes, the sanctity of marriage, and the protection of life from conception to natural death."Believing in God as creator we see our identity as male and female as a gift. Thus, we see efforts to disconnect gender from biological sex as denying the reality of who we are and the precious identity we have as a man or a woman," Porteous wrote."God created male and female as sexually complementary. This means that, sexually speaking, we have ...
Bishop Robert Pipta of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma, Ohio, celebrates a Divine Liturgy on Saturday, May 11, 2024, at the Byzantine chapel at Wyoming Catholic College, on the occasion of the installation and blessing of the new shrine. / Credit: Julian Kwasniewski/Wyoming Catholic CollegeAnn Arbor, Michigan, May 14, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).Bishop Robert Pipta of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma, Ohio, dedicated a shrine and an icon on Saturday, May 11, at Wyoming Catholic College directed to prayer specifically for persecuted Christians. In a response to CNA, Pipta wrote of the event: "To be reminded that the Theotokos continues her motherly care for persecuted Christians throughout the world is of great value to the Catholic faithful in our communities." Pipta celebrated a Divine Liturgy in the Byzantine chapel at the college and was accompanied by its chaplain, Father David Anderson; Father Benedict Kiely; students; and faculty. Bishop Robert Pipta bl...
Pope Francis meets with members of the Syro-Malabar Church on May 13, 2024, at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican MediaWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 13, 2024 / 16:53 pm (CNA).In a meeting with Major Archbishop Raphael Thattil and members of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church at the Vatican on Monday, Pope Francis urged unity and obedience amid a long-simmering liturgical conflict that continues to rock the Eastern church.As some fear an imminent schism in the ancient Eastern-rite church, the pope stressed the importance of unity, saying: "Apart from Peter, apart from the major archbishop, there is no Church." He urged the faithful present at the Vatican's Consistory Hall to "press forward" in obedience to the Church, saying: "You are obedient, and where obedience is present, there is the Church. Where there is disobedience, there is schism."What is going on in the Syro-Malabar Church?The Syro-Malabar Church is an Eastern Catholic rite in full communion with the Roman Cath...