Foreign News: Russian Church Congress

At Moscow last week there convened the Russian Church Congress. The sessions were disturbed by a continuance of the petty squabbling which has greatly aided Bolshevism in its attacks upon religion. The discord was the more notable because the reactionary adherants of the late Patriarch Tikhon abstained from any official participation in the congress; although they are thought to have gained steadily, of late, in national influence.

Notable occurrences were two: 1) Bishop Vedenski, of the great Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Savior, leader of the Russian Church reform movement, hinted broadly at a wish to discuss with the Vatican some means of reuniting the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Roman Catholic) Christian Churches, and thus bridging the great schism which has lasted more than 1,000 years. 2) Bishop Makary of Peterhof (near Leningrad) urged that the Russian Church adopt “a form of weekly prayer for the Soviet Government, which is now definitely established by the will of the majority of the Russian people . . . and therefore worthy of the prayers of Russian Christians.”