Russia, which pope longed to visit, riveted by his decline but glosses over
dispute with Orthodox
By JIM HEINTZ
.c The Associated Press
MOSCOW (AP) – Russia, a country Pope John Paul II longed to visit,
paid intense attention Saturday to the news of his deteriorating
health, but most news reports ignored the dispute that blocked him
from achieving his dream.
“We’re losing him,” the newspaper Trud headlined its front-page
story on his illness, a reflection of the sympathetic coverage the
drama has received in the overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian
country. TV news programs led their broadcasts with updates on John
Paul’s condition, some broadcasting live reports from St. Peter’s
Square.
Trud’s article noted that John Paul had made more than 100 foreign
trips; but like many other reports, it did not mention that the pope
deeply desired to make Russia one of them. Many newspapers also made
no mention of Russia’s Catholics.
Russia has about 600,000 practicing Catholics – less than 0.5 percent
of the population. But the Russian Orthodox Church complained
bitterly that Catholics were poaching for converts on its traditional
territory, exploiting a church weakened by more than 70 years of
official atheism under Soviet rule.
That was a key issue in the resistance of Russian Orthodox Church
leader Patriarch Alexy II to acceding to a papal visit.
The closest John Paul ever came was a televised prayer service beamed
to Moscow’s Roman Catholic cathedral from the Vatican. Even that
annoyed the Russian Orthodox Church, which many Russians consider
inseparable from their national identity.
John Paul, the first Slavic pope, saw a visit to Russia as a chance to
promote greater Christian unity, a millennium after the Great Schism
divided Christianity between eastern and western branches. He visited
several ex-Soviet republics including Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia and
Ukraine, but couldn’t melt the Moscow Patriarchate’s resistance.
Relations between the churches turned especially icy in 2002 after the
Vatican elevated its presence in Russia by establishing four
full-fledged dioceses headed by an archbishop.
The pope’s visit to Ukraine a year earlier also vexed the Russian
church due to the activity of the Greek Catholic church in western
Ukraine.
The Greek Catholic church follows Orthodox liturgical practices, but
recognizes the pope. It was forced by Soviet authorities to join the
Russian Orthodox Church in the 1940s and when the Soviet Union
collapsed, thousands of Greek Orthodox parishioners reclaimed their
churches, in some cases pushing out the Russian Orthodox clergy.
Amid the tensions, John Paul and Alexy frequently exchanged warm
greetings and get-well wishes. The Holy See also returned to Orthodox
hands an important icon and the relics of two Orthodox saints, a move
some saw as a concession on the increasingly ill pope’s part that he
wouldn’t be making the visit himself.
Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin on Friday said
“many people in Russia and in the Russian Orthodox Church feel the
suffering of John Paul II and wish him to get well.”
However, the church has given no indication that it is softening its
position, and John Paul’s successor is likely to face the same thorny
issues that blocked his visit.
04/02/05 13:58 EST