Pope Francis will meet in Cuba next week with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in an effort to heal the 1,000-year-old schism that has divided Christianity between East and West.

The pope and Patriarch Kirill plan to hold a “personal conversation” at Havana’s José Martí International Airport on February 12 that will conclude with the signing of a joint declaration. Details of the declaration have not been made public.

The patriarch will be on an official trip to Cuba and the pope will make the brief stop en route to Mexico, the churches said in a joint statement.

The split between the two churches since 1054 has festered over issues such as the primacy of the pope and accusations by the Russian Orthodox church that the Catholic Church is trying to poach converts in Russia.

However, the persecution of Christians — Catholic and Orthodox — in the Middle East and Africa has helped bring the two churches closer.

A meeting between Francis and Kirill has been in the cards for some time after the pope told the patriarch in November 2014, “I’ll go wherever you want. You call me and I’ll go.”

Visit to Mexico

From Cuba, Francis will travel to Mexico for a six-day tour during which he is expected to address touchy issues from violence and corruption to immigration.

History’s first pontiff from the Americas plans a visit to the U.S.- Mexico border where he will make an impassioned plea for the plight of immigrants.  Francis’ plan to cover 14,000 miles traveling from Mexico’s south to the north is meant to represent the perilous route that migrants take in an effort to reach the U.S.

“The Mexico of violence, the Mexico of corruption, the Mexico of drug trafficking, the Mexico of cartels is not the Mexico that our mother [the Virgin Mary] wants,” the pope said last week in a video message to the Mexican people.

“I, of course, will not cover any of that up. To the contrary, I want to exhort you to fight every day against corruption, against trafficking, against war, disunity, organized crime,” he promised.

Among the areas Francis plans to visit are Morelia, capital of the cartel infested Michoacan state; Chiapas, Mexico’s most impoverished and neglected state and home to many semiautonomous indigenous communities, and the northern border city of Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.
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