Papal meeting set up for Gorbachev on talian tour

by Viviane Hewitt in Rome SOVIET leader Mikhail Gorbachev is expected to meet Pope John Paul N in the Vatican on November 25, the first day of his state visit to Italy, according to USSR diplomatic sources in Rome.
Tentative confirmation of the historic first encounter between a Pontiff and a Soviet Communist Party leader also came last Saturday from Soviet Ambassador to Rome, Nikolai Lunkov.
Vatican officials admit this week that any doubts about the unprecedented audience were "dispelled" three weeks ago when a personal letter, dated August 24, from Gorbachev was consigned to the Pope by the Soviet Foreign Minister's personal representative, Juni Karlov at a meeting at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence.
The Vatican has not released details of the letter's contents but unofficial sources described it as "cordial and courteous". It is not thought to have contained an explicit suggestion for an encounter at the Holy See.
But the official Soviet news agency "Tess" has claimed the letter expressed "willingness to further develop Soviet-Vatican contacts" and to collaborate with the Pope in solving "humanity's gravest problems". Pravda, the Moscow daily, also published news of the letter to John Paul under a front page headline, "Message Consigned".
John Paul has repeatedly expressed his desire to meet Gorbachev and last reiterated it during his August visit to Spain. The letter is considered an official reply to the Pope's 1988 message to Gorbachev, which was delivered by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli on the occasion of Russian Christianity's millennium celebrations.
In that message, the Pope requested the forging of direct contacts with the Soviet Union.
Results of the Vatican's socalled "Ostpolitik" can already be seen. The Lithuanian Archbishop Julijonas Steponavicius has been freed from compulsory residence, imposed in 1961, and all six Lithuanian dioceses now have bishops. The Holy See has also been able to nominate a bishop to Minsk, a vacant see since the 1980s.
In political terms, no papal audience with Soviet exponents in the past would surpass a Vatican visit by Gorbachev. In 1967, Paul VI received then President Nikolai Podgorny, a virtually titular head of state when Leonid Brezhnev was Party Secretary. In 1985, John Paul II met privately at the Vatican with then Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, an encounter described at the time as "quite cordial but not warm.