STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pope's visit could widen rift - Russian patriarch By Vladimir Bobaryko BREST, Belarus, June 23 (Reuters) - The head of the Russian Orthodox church said on Saturday Pope John Paul's visit to Ukraine could end attempts to improve relations between the two churches. Patriarch Alexiy II, on a visit to Belarus, said the pope was going ahead with his trip despite pleas from the hierarchy of Ukraine's largest Orthodox church to postpone it. "They (Orthodox clerics) are aware that this visit will produce no peace, no stabilisation, no improvement in relations between different confessions in Ukraine," Alexiy said at Brest airport, on the border with Poland. "We would not like an end to be put, for the road to be closed, to an improvement in our relations. But it could happen this way," he said. Russia's Orthodox church and the pro-Moscow branch of Ukraine's divided Orthodox faith say Catholics have seized Orthodox property in western Ukraine and accuse the Pope of trying to win converts. Two other Orthodox churches have welcomed John Paul. Ukraine's six-million strong eastern rite Catholic church says it is reclaiming churches confiscated in 1946 when Soviet leader Josef Stalin banned their faith and turned over churches to Orthodox parishes. The ban was lifted in 1991 under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalisation measures. In an interview with the Rome daily La Repubblica ahead of John Paul's arrival, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the head of Ukraine's eastern rite, or Greek, Catholics, said he could not understand Alexiy's opposition to the visit. "The Pope does not come here to turn everyone into Catholics," he told the daily. The Pope has established as a priority reconciliation with Orthodoxy, the eastern branch of Christianity formed in the Great Schism of 1054. He was well received in Romania in 1999, his first visit to a mainly Orthodox country, but his reception was chillier in subsequent trips to ex-Soviet Georgia and Greece. Alexiy backed out of a planned meeting with John Paul in 1997 and has since refused to allow a papal visit to Russia, saying differences over Ukraine must first be resolved. 08:58 06-23-01 ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
