Oikoumene

clipped from news.yahoo.com MOSCOW - As bells pealed and worshippers wept, Russian Orthodox leaders signed a pact Thursday to heal an 80-year schism between the church in Russia and an offshoot set up abroad following the Bolshevik Revolution. The rift began three years after the 1917 revolution amid the country's civil war. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia cut all ties in 1927, after Moscow Patriarch Sergiy declared loyalty to the Communist government.