In February 2016, Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), had a meeting in Cuba and signed a joint declaration that stated inter alia: "It is our hope that our meeting may also contribute to reconciliation wherever tensions exist between Greek Catholics and Orthodox. It is today clear that the past method of 'uniatism', understood as the union of one community to the other, separating it from its Church, is not the way to re-establish unity. Nonetheless, the ecclesial communities which emerged in these historical circumstances have the right to exist and to undertake all that is necessary to meet the spiritual needs of their faithful, while seeking to live in peace with their neighbours. Orthodox and Greek Catholics are in need of reconciliation and of mutually acceptable forms of co-existence." Meanwhile, in the interview published on the eve of the meeting in Cuba, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of the Department of External Church Relations and a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the ROC, said that tensions between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the ROC's Ukrainian Orthodox Church had been recently heightened mainly due to the conflict in Ukraine. The declaration was sharply criticised by Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who said that his flock felt "betrayed" by the Vatican.