The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

The recent events in the Vatican, i. e. the voluntary resignation of the Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church (numbering some 1.2 billion members) and the election of a new extraordinary Pope, have created a sensation of a truly global scale. They make it clear that one more step forward has been made from the divide between the past and the future wrought by the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church half a century ago. The history of Christianity spans more than two millennia, but it is only now that its followers have come close to a real turning point in their relations with each other and, no less importantly, in their relations with the rest of the world. For the first time ever they are really revising their approach to spiritual search within their own institutions, their approach to coexistence, dialogue, and cooperation with people of other faiths and the atheistic citizens of this planet. All this forms the theme of the present article.