March 27, 2006

INTERVIEW - Pope visit to Moscow looks increasingly possible

By Tom Heneghan and Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Long-strained relations between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches are improving quickly and a papal trip to Moscow in coming years looks increasingly possible, a Vatican official said on Monday.

Some differences remain to be ironed out before Pope Benedict could make the trip, but a new spirit in bilateral talks has already brought progress, Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican's Council for Christian Unity, told Reuters.

Pope Benedict XVI leads a mass at the Dio Padre Misericordioso church, built by architect Richard Meier in 2003, in Rome March 26, 2006. (REUTERS/Chris Helgren)

A papal visit to the home of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest in worldwide Orthodoxy, was the great unfulfilled dream of the late Pope John Paul II. But a thaw in chilly relations with Moscow has come under his successor Benedict.

"We had a difficult period behind us but now things are moving," he said in an interview. "There is a new spirit today."

One of the main hurdles to a papal visit was Russian Orthodox suspicion that the Vatican tried to win over Orthodox believers to Catholicism after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened Russia to religion again.

Kasper said the two churches had set up a commission to review the charge of Catholic proselytism, or wooing away of Orthodox faithful, and that it was working very well.

"We are convinced the proselytism problem can be solved easily," he said. "If there are concrete cases, we are ready to investigate and if there are misuses, we will change things."

The next step was to work out an agreement on this between Benedict and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II, he said.

"If we can find such common formulas, I think a meeting can be possible," he added.

Kasper ruled out any Moscow visit this year, saying the Pope first had to travel to Turkey in November to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Istanbul-based symbolic spiritual head of worldwide Orthodoxy.

"After that visit, we can think about a (Moscow) meeting," said Kasper, a German like Benedict.

A RAPID RESOLUTION?

Alexiy signalled his interest in better relations this month in a letter to Benedict saying he hoped for a "rapid resolution" to their problems.

The Russian church has also come to see Catholicism as "an ally in the struggle for discovering the Christian roots of Europe and the struggle against terrorism", Kasper said.

Benedict made ecumenical progress a priority of his papacy when he was elected last April and has shown a preference for working with the Orthodox, who are closer to the Catholics in many teachings than the Protestant churches are.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest and most influential of the Orthodox churches that split from Rome in the Great Schism of 1054. There are now some 220 million Orthodox believers worldwide compared with 1.1 billion Catholics.

It had repeatedly vetoed any visit to Moscow by Pope John Paul, who had a standing invitation to visit from Moscow's political leaders since 1989.

After a break of more than four years, theological dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches resumed in December with a meeting of an international Catholic-Orthodox theological commission. Their first plenary session is due in September.

Talks broke down in July 2000 over Eastern rite Catholics, who left Orthodoxy and returned to unity with Rome in 1596.

The Pope this month dropped one of his nine official titles, "Patriarch of the West", in a discreet step aimed at promoting closer ties with other Christian churches.

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