Drive for unity threatened by Russian split

Hopes for Orthodox Catholic reunion, raised by the Pope's visit to Turkey last year, were boosted this week by a visit to Russia by Cardinal Willebrands and
the announcement of interchurch talks in Greece this May. But they received a setback from dissension within the Russian Orthodox church over the arrests of Fr Dimitri Dudko and others.
Cardinal Jan Willebrands is leading a Catholic delegation for a meeting with representatives of the Russian Orthodox church in Odessa.
The eight man Catholic delegation of bishops. staff and experts of the Vatican congregation for Christian unity will discuss from today until March 23. contemporary ecclesiastical developments with a Russian group led by Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev.
This is the fifth such "conversation", as they are termed, since they were instituted in the wake of the Vatican Council in 1967. The previous meeting was in Trento, Italy, in 1975.
The Odessa meeting was to be held in September 1978 but was postponed because of the deaths of Paul VI and John Paul I.
The positions of the Orthodox leaders in Russia to negotiate on behalf of their members has been thrown into doubt with the publication last week of denials by a Moscow based Archbishop that recent arrests had harmed his church's position in the USSR.
Archbishop Pitirim of Volokolamsk, head of the publications department of the Moscow Patriarchate, was quoted in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgetneine as saying Western reports of arrests were "absolutely false"! He added that the position or the Orthodox church and clergy in the Soviet Union had stabilised over the last 15 years.
Western attention had focussed on the arrests of the Orthodox priests Fr Gleb Yakunin and Fr Dimitri Dudko. The Archbishop said that these cases were exceptions and they had been arrested for offences unconnected with their priestly duties.
He concluded that the Orthodox church in Russia had no reason to complain of a lack of priests and had the prime concern of fostering detente.
Protests against Soviet treatment of active Orthodox Christians mounted in Britain this week with a service of intercession for prisoners in St Martin in the Fields church, London, on Sunday. Almost 1,000 people heard readings from the works of Fr Dudko, Fr Yakunin and Mr Lev Regelson.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, leader of Orthodox Russians in Britain, asked for prayers for persecuted and persecutors. The service was conducted in Slavonic and was recorded by the BBC Russian Service which will broadcast excerpts to the USSR. Sources in Moscow speculated this week that the three imprisoned may not be tried, but could he sent into internal exile like Dr Andrei Sakharov, or deported to the West.
The success of Cardinal Willebrand's mission to Russia is of particular importance when the Catholic-Orthodox joint theological commission: whose formation was announced during John Paul Its trip to Turkey, is about to begin its work.
The Russian Orthodox Church has favoured the pan-OrthodoxCatholic dialogue but some other Orthodox churches, such as the Greek, are less wholehearted
The first meeting or the PanOrthodox-Catholic joint commission is set for May 29-June 4 at Patmos, the Aegean island where St John saw his revelation. Fourteen delegates and 14 theorlogical assistants from each side will attend.
Cardinal Hume, a member of the Congregation for Christian Unity was to have gone to the meeting, but has to be in America at the time. The meeting has been postponed from its original date in February.
Cardinal Hume may have had a hand in preparing preliminary papers during his stay in Rome last month, The jumping off point for dialogue is expected to be the sacramental foundation of the Church.