'Why I admire the Pope'

Solzhenitsyn—warning ALEXANDER Solzhenitsyn admires the Pope because he fights the voice of the times, the Russian writer told Bernard 1,evin in an interview this week.
Solzhenitsyn said that he thought very highly of the spirit the Pope had brought into the Catholic Church and his lisely interest in problems all round Ihe world.
The Nobel prize winner, who Inas in London to receive another prize for religion, said that his admiration for the Pope stemmed from his awareness of the Divine. But he could not pass the same judgment on some priests in South and Central America who "have fallen to one of the temptations that socialism spreads before us.
"Socialism," Solzhenitsyn said in The limes interview, "which in its very root is totally opposed to Christianity, loves to pretend that is has taken much from Christianity ."
Solzhenitsyn distinguished between social concerns and the teaching of Christ. "One must take part in social struggle in the name of the soul of every person and the soul of every organisation. Whereas if we are involved simply in a struggle for material rights, that has nothing to do with Christianity."