This site provides you with a chance to become more familiar with the life of the Church of Christ in Russia in its various traditional forms as well as with the contemporary Catholic-Orthodox relations and dialogues in Russia. Further, you can become aquainted with the life of the Orthodox Church as well as with various Catholic parishes in Russia. Also a special section of this home page will offer hospitality to philosophers.

For centuries Russian Orthodoxy and Catholicism have been in contact with each other. Sometimes directly and more often indirectly through the medium of cultural exchanges and politics. Until the present century direct relations were cold and unfriendly. However, since the time of the Second Vatican Council and the spiritual fruits gained under the yoke of the atheistic persecution the Churches had made notable improvements in their mutual relations. In 1991 when the Catholic Church established new ecclesial structures in the Russian Federation, and the conflict in the Ukraine began with respect to the re-possessing of Churches by Greek Catholics, Orthodox-Catholic relations suffered a serious blow. In the last few years gradual improvements have been made in our understanding of each other and in our mutual relations.

The hope of this site is to investigate ecumenical and cultural posssibilities for developing Catholic-Orthodox Communion in the third Millenium and to study the different degrees of commmunion that can exist between the Churches. This investigation looks at weak points in Catholic-Orthodox communion and makes suggestions for the attaining of full communion.

Russian Orthodoxy and her Traditions

Ecumenism and Theology

Philosophy and Culture

The Catholic Church in Russia

This site would like to make a recommendation: that you become aquainted with an ecumenically sensitive Catholic Parish in Russia. The parish of Syzran is an average sized parish in provincial Russia. Its story and the tales that its parishoners have to tell, represent what it means to be a Latin Rite Catholic in the Russia of today. How did the parish begin, who are the parishoners, how has it grown, what difficulties does it face and what does the future hold for it? The answers to these questions tell a typical story of Catholics in Russia. From the Syzran Home Page links to other parishes in Russia will be made. 

If you would like to contribute to this home page and offer your articles we would be glad to consider them for inclusion. Anything that treats of religion in Russia, of Russian culture and traditions, of philosophy and theology is of interest. 

If you would like to e-mail us 
please send your message to church-unity@bigfoot.com