NEWS STORY: Pope to make historic visit to predominantly Orthodox Romania

c. 1999 Religion News Service VATICAN CITY _ In a bold but potentially risky bid to heal a schism that has lasted almost 1,000 years, Pope John Paul II will travel to Romania on Friday (May 7) for the first papal visit in history to a predominantly Christian Orthodox country. The almost 57 hours the […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ In a bold but potentially risky bid to heal a schism that has lasted almost 1,000 years, Pope John Paul II will travel to Romania on Friday (May 7) for the first papal visit in history to a predominantly Christian Orthodox country.

The almost 57 hours the Roman Catholic pontiff will spend in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, could serve as a springboard toward reconciliation _ or simply confirm the bitter thousand-year breach between Catholics and Orthodox.


The Polish-born pope is scheduled to meet with Romanian Orthodox Patriarch Teoctist and his bishops on Saturday. In a strong ecumenical gesture, the pope and the patriarch will attend each other’s liturgies on Sunday.

But Romania’s Catholic minority was disappointed John Paul would not travel to Transylvania, where most of the country’s 2.6 million Catholics live. Officials said they could not guarantee John Paul’s security outside Bucharest.

Shortly after the trip was announced in February, a representative of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexii II, Archpriest Viktor Petlyuchenko, warned the visit could”produce misunderstandings”between Catholics and Orthodox. The Russian Orthodox Church has refused to invite the pope to Moscow.”If John Paul II does not succeed in opening a new era after a long period of incomprehension and clashes between Catholics and Orthodox in Romania, then his visit could prove to be counterproductive,”Petlyuchenko said.

In addition to such longstanding theological differences over such issues as papal primacy and infallibility, in recent years the two communions have divided over the issue of church property in countries formerly ruled by communists and alleged proselytizing by Eastern Rite Catholics _ Eastern Catholic churches who reunited with Rome but maintained their liturgical tradition.

The trip, John Paul’s 86th outside Italy in the two decades of his papacy, may also prove politically important because it will take him to the heart of the Balkans and next door to a conflict he has deplored.

Romania, which borders Yugoslavia to the north, has just (May 3) given NATO full access to its airspace and airports for missions against Serb forces and agreed to take in 6,000 refugees from Kosovo, who are presently in Macedonia. Yugoslavia is also a predominantly Christian Orthodox country.

Vatican sources said there is no doubt John Paul will make use of his proximity to Yugoslavia to renew his appeal for an end to hostilities.


While condemning the ethnic cleansing of mostly Muslim ethnic Albanians the Serbs are carrying out in Kosovo, the pope has also criticized the NATO bombing campaign and repeatedly urged dialogue rather than warfare to restore peace and justice.

Mounting an unusually forceful diplomatic offensive, he sent his foreign minister, Archbishop Jean Louis Tauran, to Belgrade on April 1 to deliver a personal appeal to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end hostilities over Kosovo.

The Vatican is also involved in relief operations. On the pope’s instructions, Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council”Cor Unum,”the Vatican’s humanitarian agency, has traveled to Albania and Macedonia to coordinate church efforts to aid the tens of thousands of Kosovar refugees.

The conflict _ and John Paul’s explicit condemnation of the Serb offensive against Albanian Kosovars _ have complicated efforts toward Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation.

Officials announced last week (April 27) they have postponed the meeting scheduled for June 6-15 in Maryland of the Joint International Commission for the Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church.

Catholic and Orthodox officials said the meeting, which would have been the first official dialogue in six years, was delayed for one year so that Serb and other Balkan Orthodox leaders could stay close to home. They are also reluctant to visit the NATO nation leading the attack on Orthodox Serbs.


The two churches have been divided over theological differences since 1054 when their leaders excommunicated each other. In a symbolic gesture of reconciliation, Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I mutually lifted the”anathemas”and they were”erased from the memory”of the church during the pope’s visit to Jerusalem in 1966, and official dialogue began in 1980.

Arranging a papal visit to the Orthodox world was not easy, however.

After the Russian Orthodox Church refused the pope an invitation two years ago, the Vatican turned to Romania, whose church is second to the Russian church in numbers and importance, and was turned down again.

Romanian President Emil Costantinescu, a former rector of the University of Bucharest who is said to admire John Paul, came to his rescue. When the president issued an invitation, the church was forced to follow suit.

According to Vatican statistics, Orthodox make up 86 percent of Romania’s population of 22,680,000, Catholics 11.4 percent and Jews, Protestants and Muslims the remaining 2.6 percent. Of the Catholics, 1.5 million practice the Latin rite and the others are members of the Greek rite in full communion with Rome.

During the Cold War, Romania’s communist regime passed a decree forcefully integrating the Greek Catholics, who then numbered 1.5 million, into the Orthodox Church and seizing some 2,000 churches and other property.

Post-Cold War disputes over the property strained Catholic-Orthodox relations in recent years, but a joint committee formed last June signed an agreement in January on property restoration and committed the churches to dialogue.


DEA END POLK

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!