MOSCOW/ROME: For a decade, Pope John Paul II has been flying in circles around Mother Russia: one day he visits the Baltics or his homeland of Poland; the next, Orthodox Romania and Georgia. In June, 2001 Pope John Paul II will visit Ukraine and Armenia, both parts of the former Soviet Union and both still watched over warily by Russia’s Orthodox Church. Karol Wojtyla, the first Slavic Pope in history, has long dreamed of visiting Moscow; indeed he may see such a visit as putting the finishing touch on his long, turbulent pontificate. But, a decade after communism’s collapse, it is Russia’s churchmen, not its politicians, who are blocking the way.

From Khrushchev onward, Moscow’s rulers eyed the Vatican suspiciously but not without interest. Kremlin leaders instinctively understood the benefits of normalising relations with the Holy See for Soviet propaganda and foreign policy, and meetings between the Pope and Andrei Gromyko and Nikolai Podgorny did take place. Not until 1989, however, did Mikhail Gorbachev dare establish official relations with the Vatican, inviting Pope John Paul II to visit the Soviet Union.

Boris Yeltsin repeated the invitation in 1991, and Vladimir Putin did the same on his visit to Rome soon after his inauguration as Russia’s president. No papal visit to Moscow has taken place, however, because Russia’s Orthodox Church remains opposed.

The Russian Orthodox attitude is voiced repeatedly by Patriarch Alexy II and his closest aides, including the Patriarchy’s “foreign minister,” Metropolitan Kyrill. Before the announcement of the Papal visit to Ukraine, the Italian newspaper "Corriera della Sera" quoted Patriarch Alexy II as admitting that a papal visit was possible, but only if “persecution” of Russian Orthodoxy by Catholics in western Ukraine and proselytising by Catholic clergy on the "canonic territory" of the Russian Orthodox church came to an end. Although seemingly hardline, these two conditions are a step forward for the Patriarch from his notorious statement of a few years ago, when he said that a true Orthodox Christian must not even pick mushrooms in the same forest as a Catholic.

The Soviet Union, the Communist Party of the USSR, and the KGB may have collapsed, but the Russian Orthodox Church still defends the sacred borders of the former Russian empire. Moreover, because almost half of the parishes overseen by the Moscow Patriarchate are abroad – in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Central Asia and other regions – Patriarch Alexy II lays increasing stress on the global character of his church. Indeed, the Russian Church’s archbishops presented their Patriarch a golden icon, one side of which depicted the Last Supper and the other a map of his vast canonical territory, to mark the tenth anniversary of his reign.

Clearly, all the bows and plaintive “mea culpas” made by the Pope over the past year to mark the 2000th anniversary of the Birth of Christ, have not satisfied the Patriarch. So, sadly, the Pontiff’s dream of stepping on Russian soil, a soil lavishly showered with the blood of martyrs, before what the Pope has called this terrible "wolverine" century comes to an end, may never come true. Opportunities for a meeting between the two church leaders still exist, of course. For example, in 2001 both the Catholic and Orthodox Easter will fall on the same day – 15 April – an extremely rare occurrence. What better pretext could there be for an ecumenical meeting? But will the Patriarch seize the moment?

The wounds between the two churches would heal if left undisturbed. I will never forget how two old men – the Pope and 90-year old Academician Dmitry Likhachev – leafed through a rare book together with tears in their eyes. Likhachev was showing the Pope an album about the Solovetsy camp where Likhachev had been imprisoned for “religious propaganda”. The album contained photographs of the windows of the old monk’s cells to which the Soviets had affixed bars; for years these cells imprisoned Catholic clergymen, such as those arrested after State Prosecutor Nikolay Krylenko proclaimed the Catholic Church “an enemy of the people” in 1917.

No one in authority in Russia, however, has ever repented for crimes committed against the country’s own people. The hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, indeed, has not admitted the sins of its collaboration with the Soviet state. Such a “mea culpa” from Russia might also help begin to heal the wounds of the Catholic/Orthodox division.

Rapprochement between Christians is today a moral and political imperative. The Pope made the first step in a meeting last spring with Patriarch Shenuda III of the Coptic Orthodox Church during the Pope’s visit to the Holy land. John Paul II hinted, daringly, at the possibility of revising the thousand-year old principle of the Bishop of Rome being first of the apostles and Christ’s vicar on earth. Since 1054, this idea has been a primary obstacle to Christian unity.

According to the Kremlin press service, President Putin speaks to Patriarch Alexy II often. Perhaps he should explain to him that failure to pursue rapprochement with the Vatican contradicts Russia’s state interests. For the Kremlin and the Vatican see eye to eye on many problems, including the Middle East. As Russia’s struggles to find a role and a voice in world diplomacy, having the Holy See as an ally would be beneficial.

“The tears of this century laid the ground for a new spring of the human spirit," the Pope declared in his last visit to the UN. Russia, as everyone knows, has suffered as much as, if not more than, any country. Sadly, as the title from one of Russia’s most beloved movies of the communist era tells us, it still seems that “Moscow (or at least its Patriarch) does not believe in tears.”