c. 2000 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ A day after failing to find common ground with President Clinton, Russian President Vladimir Putin took his discussions of missile controls to the Vatican for a cordial meeting on Monday (June 5) with Pope John Paul II, and asked the pontiff to help achieve his vision of a fully integrated Eastern and Western Europe.

Putin, making his first trip abroad since his election in March, met with the Roman Catholic pontiff and Italian leaders just one day after holding inconclusive talks with Clinton in Moscow. Putin told Clinton he was “against having a cure that is worse than the disease.”

At a brief news conference with Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato, Putin proposed instead that Russia work with Europe and NATO to create their own theater anti-rocket defense system to counterbalance the U.S. missile shield.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Putin and the pope discussed disarmament but not the missile issue during their 30-minute meeting with only two interpreters present.

They met another 10 minutes with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state; Archbishop Jean-Louis Taurant, the Vatican’s foreign minister; and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

The spokesman described the audience in the pope’s study overlooking St. Peter’s Square as “cordial and relaxed.”

John Paul shook hands with Putin at the door, saying, “I’m very happy to receive you here in the Vatican at the beginning of your mandate.”

“It was my decision to come because for me this is a very significant visit,” Putin replied. Later, shaking hands on his departure, the Russian president thanked the pope for the Vatican’s collaboration through international organizations in the search for world peace.

In a written statement issued after the meeting, Navarro-Valls said the talks covered “the role of the Holy See and of Russia in the process of integration between East and West, in which, in the judgment of President Putin, the mission of the Holy See is particularly important.

“Special consideration was reserved for the problems of disarmament and the international situation,” the statement said.

Navarro-Valls said the leaders spoke only in general terms. “There was no discussion of specifics,” he said.

Putin, he said, “focused on the idea of integrating Eastern and Western Europe and the role of the Holy See in working on this very important initiative.”

“The pope listened intently to this new and very ambitious approach,” the spokesman said. Referring to the Russian president, he said, “He’s a new person with a new approach, a new vision.”

Navarro-Valls said Putin did not repeat the invitation to visit Russia that John Paul received on previous visits of former leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.

But, he said, “The invitation for the visit is there. It is very active. The dialogue between the Orthodox patriarchate and the Catholic Church is going on. There is a process going on. I cannot anticipate anything.”

Such a trip would be a pastoral as well as a state visit and protocol would require an invitation also from the predominant Russian Orthodox Church as well as the small Roman Catholic Church.

With relations between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches strained over economic and religious issues arising from the fall of communism as well as by a millennium of separation, Russian Orthodox leaders have resisted all Vatican overtures.

But, according to a report by the Russian news agency Interfax issued Sunday (June 4), Patriarch Alexii II, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, has softened his opposition somewhat.

In what appeared to be an almost conciliatory statement, the patriarch said during a pastoral visit to Karelia in northwest Russia that he “did not exclude for the future the possibility of meeting with the pope.”

Alexii said that first, however, there must be resolution of centuries-old disagreements, aggravated by disputes over property and allegations of Catholic proselytizing following the fall of communism.

“Such a meeting shouldn’t happen just before the television cameras,” the patriarch said. “It’s necessary that it be well prepared for and bring about concrete results.”

Putin, who will travel from Rome to Milan in Italy’s industrial north, also had talks with President Carolo Azeglio Ciampi and attended a dinner in his honor in the presidential Quirinal Palace.

The visit of a Russian leader to the Vatican would have been unthinkable during the Cold War but since Gorbachev’s dramatic audience with John Paul in December 1989, such meetings have become normal occurrences.

KRE END POLK