‘Finally, brother,’ Pope Francis says in historic meeting with Russian Orthodox patriarch

by Joseph Saraceno

PATFRAPope Francis on Friday crossed the Atlantic Ocean and then a millennium of division and distrust when he traveled to Cuba and met with the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It was the first encounter ever between the heads of two of the largest branches of the Christian faith, whose estrangement for 1,000 years represents the deepest East-West divide in Christianity. MORE