The meeting took place two days after Pope Francis expressed his “great sorrow” over Russia’s attacks on two hospitals in Kiev, including Ukraine’s largest children’s medical center.
As the Russian Orthodox Church’s chief ecumenical officer, Anthony has met Pope Francis twice since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The pope kissed the Orthodox metropolitan’s pectoral cross during a brief encounter after a Wednesday general audience in May 2023 and had a “lengthy conversation” with Anthony shortly after he was appointed in 2022.
Pope Francis has wanted to meet with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine.
The two have not met since their historic first meeting in the Havana airport in February 2016 — the first meeting between a pope and a patriarch of Moscow.
A planned second meeting between the two leaders in Jerusalem in June 2022 was canceled following a video call between the pope and the Russian patriarch in March of that year.
