_WORLD WATCH______________________________
______________________UKRAINE___________________
Dates set for Pope’s trip
Hopes to ease Catholic-Orthodox tensions
Pope John Paul II will travel to Ukraine on June 21, returning on June 24, 2001. The Vatican released the official dates for the papal trip on November 30.
On the day following that announcement, during a meeting with 22 Ukrainian-rite Catholic bishops, Pope John Paul said that he is looking forward impatiently to his trip to Ukraine.
The bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church were in Rome for their synod, under the leadership of Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky of Lviv. The Pope urged them to “avoid sterile opposition” to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and work for a restoration of Christian unity in that country. Conflicts between the Orthodox and Catholic churches have been particularly heated in Ukraine, where the Eastern-rite Catholic Church was suppressed by the Soviet regime and has grown rapidly since the fall of Communism.
As he met with the Ukrainian bishops, Pope John Paul recalled the suffering that the Catholic faithful had endured under Stalinist persecution. All of the bishops of the Ukrainian rite were arrested in 1947, and members of the clergy were presented with the choice of joining the Orthodox Church or being imprisoned. Many priests and lay people chose instead to worship in an underground Catholic community. The Pope noted that these Ukrainian Catholics had “a sorrowful experience of the catacombs.”
Today, however, the Church faces “a new era,” the Pope observed. The 5.5 million Ukrainian-rite Catholics, having won official government recognition again in 1989, should now work together to carry out a clear pastoral plan, he said. He suggested that the bishops should stress teaching, and in particular the theology of the Eastern tradition.
Although the Pope has consistently emphasized the importance of amicable relations between Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox, the official Vatican announcement of his June visit to that country was noteworthy in that it did not mention the Orthodox Church. The Vatican indicated that the Pope would travel to Ukraine at the invitation of the country’s Catholic bishops and of President Leonid Kuchma. While the Romanian Orthodox bishops issued a formal invitation prior to the Pope’s visit there in 1999, no such invitation has been forthcoming from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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