The Vatican yesterday dismissed Orthodox anger at Pope John Paul II's controversial visit to Ukraine, describing it as political. But, the Vatican claimed, the Pope's status as an anticommunist hero in the former Soviet republic made it hard to separate religion and politics.
A warning by Patriarch Alexis II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, that the Papal visit could prolong the interfaith turf war was "political rather than religious", Vatican spokesman, Msg Joaquin Navarro, said. "I think the reunification of Christians is a religious matter," Msg Navarro added as the Pontiff called for the two churches to shelve their differences at the first open-air Mass of his five-day visit to Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of Catholic pilgrims - much fewer than the hundreds of thousands expected - gathered in pouring rain for the Latin Mass at an airport just outside Kiev. The Pope once again mixed religion and politics, celebrating Ukraine's emergence from "the dark times of communism" and appealing for a return to the unity that existed between the Eastern and Western churches before the Great Schism of 1054 AD. The Pope praised Kiev as the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy dating from its conversion in 988. But in an overtly political speech to Ukraine's government and religious elites, he also celebrated Ukraine's recovery a millennium later from what he called the "atheist oppression" and "terrible years of the Soviet dictatorship".
Archbishop Vladimir, the head of Ukraine's pro-Moscow Orthodox Church, boycotted the Pope's meeting with the country's Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders.
But President Leonid Kuchma, whose scandal-wracked regime has attracted international attention, praised the Pope on the eve of the airport Mass as a political as well as religious leader.
"In the person of his holiness, we are greeting not only the head of the Catholic Church but also a remarkable figure of modern times ... an unbeatable fighter for human rights and dignity," Mr Kuchma said before talks Saturday at the presidential palace in Kiev.
The Pope's first act on arriving was to seek forgiveness for Catholic "errors" towards the Orthodox majority and to pay tribute to the historical sacrifices made by Ukrainians.
The Russian Orthodox Church yesterday welcomed the Papal apology as a "good sign", but added that it must be followed by "an attempt to open a direct, honest dialogue" with the Moscow church, to which most of Ukraine's Orthodox parishes are tied.
Saluting the memory of Ukrainians who died in the second World War. the Pope added: "Unfortunately liberation from Nazism marked the return of a regime which continued to trample on the most elementary human rights."
And he denounced Soviet communism for "deporting defenceless citizens, imprisoning dissidents, persecuting believers and even attempting to erase the very idea of freedom and independence from the consciousness of the Ukrainian people.
"Happily, the great turning-point of 1989 finally permitted Ukraine to regain her freedom and full sovereignty," the Pope said.
The Pope is widely credited with persuading the Soviet authorities to lift a ban on Catholicism in the same year as the Berlin Wall came down, a move that was followed in 1991 by Ukraine's declaration of independence.
Since the collapse 10 years ago of the Soviet Union, the Orthodox majority in Ukraine has accused Catholics of seeking to convert the population, taking control of parishes and seizing assets.