Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Dec. 22, 2021. / Vatican Media.Vatican City, Dec 22, 2021 / 03:15 am (CNA).Pope Francis met with Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk on Wednesday amid rising expectations of a second encounter between the pope and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2022. The Holy See press office said that the pope received the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate before his general audience on Dec. 22.Vatican Media.The pope had announced the meeting with Metropolitan Hiliarion during his in-flight press conference on his return from Greece on Dec. 6, saying that the bishop was visiting him "to arrange a possible meeting" with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow.Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill at Havana airport in Cuba on Feb. 12, 2016, in the first meeting between a pope and a Patriarch of Moscow.The Russian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church wi
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