Controversy continues as itinerary for pope's visit to Ukraine is finalized (06/03/01)

Controversy continues as itinerary for pope's visit to Ukraine is finalized

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - As controversy and protest continue to swirl around the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ukraine, organizers announced the pontiff's itinerary for his five-day stay in the country.

The first-ever official visit to Ukraine by the successor to St. Peter and the head of the Catholic Church will begin on June 23. It will revolve around four public masses to take place in Kyiv and Lviv, in the Byzantine and Latin rites, one each morning of his visit. The pope will meet with President Leonid Kuchma and other state officials, as well as the bishops of both the Ukrainian Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches. Also planned is a special meeting with Ukrainian youth during an open-air concert in Lviv.

On May 26 Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, the head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, announced from the Vatican that the pope had asked to meet also with the leaders of the three Ukrainian Orthodox confessions during his visit. Although invitations have been extended, nothing has been confirmed.

Accusations by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in particular have precipitated a controversy that thus far has clouded the papal visit. Since the Vatican announced the trip early this year, the Russian Orthodox Church and its Kyiv Metropolia in Ukraine, officially called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), has vociferously attacked the trip as a threat to the universal ecumenical movement and Vatican relations with the Moscow Church.

Some 250 faithful of the UOC-MP marched from the Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv, one of the holiest sites of Orthodoxy, to the Verkhovna Rada building on May 25 in the latest protest against the papal visit. They called for the visit to be canceled.

On May 27, while on a visit to Azerbaijan, Patriarch Aleksei II, the head of the ROC, said the papal visit to Ukraine "will not bring soothing and pacification between religious groups in Ukraine, but will bring further aggravation," according to the Catholic News Service.

The Moscow patriarch made his remarks while Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, effectively the Vatican's foreign affairs minister, was in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Catholic Church in Russia. Archbishop Tauran emphasized in statements made there that the papal visit to Ukraine was strictly a pilgrimage.

A few days later, during a press conference in Kyiv on May 29, the papal nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Mykola Eterovic, delineated a threefold mission for the pope's trip: to meet with the leadership of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which "has deep roots and is very dynamic," as the archbishop explained, and celebrate its successful revival after persecution under Soviet rule; to develop contacts with the Ukrainian government; and to continue a dialogue with the Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

The comments by the Catholic Church officials, however, will hardly appease the Russian patriarch, who primarily fears that the visit by the charismatic if elderly current successor to St. Peter - even if it were to carry merely symbolic underpinnings - could be the beginning of a serious effort at proselytization by the Catholic Church, further weakening the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

The ROC has seen the loss of millions of its faithful over the course of the century just completed. It was initially disabled - although not annihilated as the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church was - during Soviet rule and then further debilitated in the last 10 years by several schisms, which have left the country with three Orthodox confessions: the UOC-MP, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). It also has recently suffered losses of faithful to several Protestant denominations and non-denominational groups.

The UOC-MP also is vexed that it was not invited by the Ukrainian government to plan the conditions and timeframe of the papal visit, but many here believe that its involvement only would have set the date back indefinitely.

Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma has thrown aside that particular criticism, repeatedly asserting that neither the UOC-MP nor any other religious group has a right to determine the conditions of the pope's visit because it is officially a state visit by the head of the Vatican under the aegis of the Ukrainian state.

While leaders of the UOC-MP have said they would not meet with the pope, leaders of the UOC-KP and the UAOC had stated earlier that they would not refuse an invitation. The pope is scheduled to meet with the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, of which the UOC-MP is a leading member, on the second day of his visit. It is expected that a private meeting with Ukrainian Orthodox leaders could take place afterwards.

Whereas state leaders previously had stuck to terse statements of support for their decision to invite the pope to Ukraine in order not to rile up the Orthodox faithful, lately they have moved to expansive declarations. On May 23 Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatolii Zlenko said the papal visit would not only help in the development of relations between Kyiv and the Vatican but would contribute to the intellectual development of the Ukrainian nation and its integration into Europe.

"I have a feeling that after the visit of His Holiness, we will be more conscious, united, self-assured and better as a whole," said Mr. Zlenko, who said the concerns and complaints surrounding the papal visit for the most part are "over-politicized and groundless."

President Kuchma said on May 30 that, "the visit is necessary for all of Ukraine, rather than simply for the president, the Parliament or the government," and stated that under no conditions would he call it off as some Orthodox have been demanding.

The controversy and the issues that concern certain Orthodox leaders may have been successfully overblown by a publicity campaign aimed at derailing the papal visit. Most sociological polls have shown that the majority of Ukrainians, whether Catholic, Orthodox or of other confessions, either support the visit of Pope John Paul II or are indifferent to his presence in Ukraine - a fact that prompted Cardinal Husar of the UGCC to comment that the UOC-MP leadership was artificially fomenting the discord.

"A clear distinction must be made between the people and the [Orthodox] hierarchy," explained Cardinal Husar, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic primate. "The people very much desire to meet the holy father, whereas the hierarchy is more divided; some are favorable but others, those more closely linked with Russia, are contrary."

Up to 450,000 pilgrims are expected to descend on Kyiv from the outlying regions of Ukraine, as well as Russia, Belarus, Poland and the Baltic states, to see and hear the pope. Nearly 2 million could be on hand in Lviv. Although President Kuchma has criticized the slow pace of preparations and the relatively low level of publicity in Ukraine regarding the event, most organizers expect that all will be ready by June 23.

In Kyiv the pope will attend two divine liturgies at the Chaika Aerodrome on the outskirts of Kyiv. The first mass will be in the Latin rite, followed the next day by a Byzantine rite liturgy. The same order will be followed for the two divine liturgies to be held at the Lviv Hippodrome.

The order of the services has brought some criticism from Ukrainian Greek-Catholic laity over why the Latin rite, with only a million adherents, will have predominance over the Byzantine rite used by the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, which counts nearly five times that number in Ukraine.

Archbishop Eterovic said the most important divine celebrations are to be the final one in Lviv during which 28 Ukrainian martyrs for the faith will be beatified. That service will be in the Byzantine rite.

He said the pope has been extended the courtesy of having the first service to be held in Kyiv in the Latin rite because he will serve that mass. In the Byzantine rite services he will take part merely as an observer.

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