Leonid Bershidsky: The Orthodox church stays in the Dark Ages
Pope Francis (L) reaches to embrace the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill during a historic meeting in Havana on February 12, 2016.
Pope Francis' enormous popularity - his Twitter accounts in different languages have a total of about 30 million followers, about as many as Bill Gates and more than Adele - is a consequence of his openness to diversity and a softer approach to dogma. He represents a modernized Catholic Church. By contrast, the world's second biggest Christian denomination is proving so resistant to modernization that its plans to adopt some timid changes for the first time since 787 have fallen through.
