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  • Russia, which pope longed to visit, riveted by his decline but...

    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
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