Catholic relations with Orthodox improve

MOCOW, Russia, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- A possible meeting between the heads of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches is being discussed, a Catholic cardinal said in Moscow.

The RIA Novosti news service Tuesday said Cardinal Roger Etchegaray met as an envoy of Pope Benedict XVI with Patriarch Alexy II in Moscow to discuss cooperation between the two churches.

Alexy recently accepted an invitation from the pope to attend an October conference on the first pontifical encyclical letter. The patriarch had turned down previous invitations from the Vatican amid a dispute over Catholic efforts to find converts in Eastern Europe.

The cardinal said inter-church relations had been on the upswing in the past year, and that he had delivered a letter and a gold pen to Alexy.