Pope Thanks Putin for Helping Boost Orthodox Ties
By Shasta Darlington
VATICAN CITY (Reuters)
Pope John Paul, during a private audience at the Vatican Wednesday, thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his efforts to bring the Catholic and Orthodox churches closer.
But the courtesy visit, Putin's second in three years, was not expected to pave the way for the 83-year-old pontiff to fulfill his long-hoped-for trip to Russia any time soon.
The pope received Putin in his papal apartments and greeted him in Russian.
He thanked Putin "for all he has done to bring the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church closer together," said a Russian journalist who was present during their initial greeting.
The two then held a 30-minute private meeting, accompanied only by a translator.
"Both parties gave their best wishes for positive developments in the dialogue between the Holy See and the Moscow Patriarchy," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.
Ahead of his visit to Italy, Putin said he wanted to help improve soured relations between the Orthodox and Catholic churches but was not optimistic about an imminent papal visit.
His failing health could prevent the pope, a key figure in the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, from realizing his dream of visiting Moscow unless an opportunity presented itself in the very near future.
But attempts to promote dialogue between the Vatican and a reinvigorated Russian Orthodox Church, tainted by a decade of post-Communist suspicions, have made little progress.
"I therefore see my objective not in helping to get the pope to Russia but in helping steps toward unity. And naturally this is possible only if there is an understanding between churches," Putin told Italian journalists before leaving Russia.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said relations between the churches also came up during his meeting with Putin earlier Wednesday.
Pope John Paul sees reconciliation with Orthodoxy, separated from the Catholic faith since the Great Schism of 1054, as a goal of his papacy. He first visited an Orthodox country, Romania, in 1999 and has since toured many ex-Soviet states.
