c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Pope John Paul II Monday (Nov. 8) met Orthodox Christian resistance in Georgia after boldly proclaiming in the face of Hindu hostility in India that Christianity was poised to sweep across Asia in the new millennium.

Arriving in Tbilisi, capital of impoverished Georgia, John Paul called for”new bridges”between the Catholic and Orthodox churches and”a more truly shared witness to Jesus Christ, the gospel of eternal life.” Georgia is the second predominantly Orthodox nation the pope has visited this year. But unlike his May visit to Romania, John Paul received a relatively cool reception.

Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II and President Eduard Shevardnadze greeted the pope at Tbilisi’s airport, but neither man responded to the Roman Catholic leader’s ecumenical overtures, focusing instead on political matters.

A day earlier in India, the pope, speaking at a Mass in New Delhi, said:”Just as the first millennium saw the cross firmly planted in the soil of Europe and the second in that of America and Africa, so may the third Christian millennium witness a great harvest of faith on this vast and vital continent.” Later, meeting with leaders of India’s Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jain, Jewish, Baha’i and Zoroastrian faiths, John Paul underlined the respect of the Catholic church for their beliefs and its desire to deepen inter-faith dialogue _ which he maintained did not conflict with Christian missionary efforts.

Asserting the responsibility that all the world’s religions have for the well-being of all people, he called for”the globalization of solidarity which must come if the future of the world is to be secure.” At the same time, the pope firmly stated the church’s the right and duty to seek converts by”proclaiming Jesus Christ in Asia”and demanded that Catholics be assured the freedom to practice their religion.

Christian missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, have come under increasing attack in India from Hindu extremists, who have killed priests, raped nuns and destroyed prayer halls and Bibles.

Hindu hard-liners demanded that the pope ask pardon for past”atrocities”of the church. They also wanted him to promise to halt what they claim are”forced conversions”of Hindus to Christianity.

But John Paul did no such thing during his India visit. Instead, he told Asia’s Roman Catholic bishops that evangelization is the church’s basic mission.”This insistence on proclamation is prompted not by sectarian impulse nor the spirit of proselytism nor any sense of superiority,”he said.”The church evangelizes in obedience to Christ’s command, in the knowledge that every person has the right to hear the Good News of the God who reveals and gives himself to Christ.” The purpose of the pope’s three-day trip to India was to present his”apostolic exhortation”to the Asian bishops. The exhortation was his response to the deliberations of an assembly of Asian bishops that met at the Vatican in 1998. It was one of a series of continent-wide synods of bishops that John Paul called to plan the course of the church in the new millennium.

The pope’s call for a”new evangelization”was a focus of all the synods, but it had a special significance for the bishops of Asia, where Catholics make up only 2 per cent of the world’s most populous continent.

The ailing 79-year-old pontiff extended his trip to make a 30-hour stop in the Caucasian republic of Georgia in pursuit of better relations between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which have been divided since the schism of 1054.

It was his first visit to a formerly Soviet state and his second to a predominantly Orthodox country, following his trip to Romania. In contrast to the warmth of Romania’s Orthodox leaders, many of those in Georgia were wary of the pope, and the powerful Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow Alexii told the Russian Itar-Tass news agency that the Georgian hierarchy”must understand the consequences of their actions”in receiving the pope.

IR END POLK