Moscow trip may be off, Rome fears

by our Rome correspondent
THERE were fears in Rome this week that Pope John Paul II's visit to the Soviet Union, tentatively scheduled for next year, could be cancelled because of new tensions between the church and Orthodoxy.
Reports have reached Rome that, ironically, Catholicism has found its ally in Soviet civil authorities, from Mikhail Gorbachev down, who are anxious that John Paul visit
Moscow.
A decade of Vatican diplomacy and ecumenism with regard to the Russian Orthodox church was erased earlier in October when the Orthodox patriarchy refused the Pope's personal invitation to send "fraternal delegates" to the November/December Synod on Europe in Rome (Catholic Herald October 18 & 25).
Orthodox leaders claimed relations between the two churches were still strained because of Catholicism's penetration into the canonical territory of the Soviet Union's official state religion. And they alleged that a settlement still had to be reached over property rights, including former Catholic churches handed over to Orthodoxy under Stalin in 1946.
Vatican Secretariat of State sources said this week that Holy See diplomacy with the aid of Kremlin authorities had now stepped up their initiatives for a solution, but it was unlikely to come before the synod's scheduled opening at the end of this month.