Pope Francis will stop in Cuba on his way to Mexico next week to hold a historic meeting with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Vatican said on Friday.
The unprecedented meeting next Friday, the first between a pope an a Russian Orthodox Patriarch in history, will be a hugely significant step towards healing the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in the Great Schism of 1054.