Pope Francis chose the wrong tone, such statements are unlikely to contribute to the establishment of a constructive dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, which is especially needed at the present time.

Russian Orthodox Church

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; Russian: Ру́сская правосла́вная це́рковь, romanized: Rússkaya pravoslávnaya tsérkov), alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian: Моско́вский патриарха́т, romanized: Moskóvskiy patriarkhát), is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus'. The ROC, as well as its primate, officially ranks fifth in the Eastern Orthodox order of precedence, immediately below the four ancient patriarchates of the Greek Orthodox Church: Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.The Christianization of Kievan Rus', widely seen as the birth of the ROC, is believed to have occurred in 988 through the baptism of the Rus' prince Vladimir and his people by the clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, whose constituent part the ROC remained for the next six centuries, while the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' remained in the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate until 1686. The ROC currently claims exclusive jurisdiction over the Eastern Orthodox Christians, irrespective of their ethnic background, who reside in the former member republics of the Soviet Union, excluding Georgia. The ROC also created the autonomous Church of Japan and Chinese Orthodox Church. The ROC eparchies in Belarus and Latvia, since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, enjoy various degrees of self-government, albeit short of the status of formal ecclesiastical autonomy. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (or ROCOR, also known as the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad), headquartered in the United States. The ROCOR was instituted in the 1920s by Russian communities outside the Soviet Union, whi

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