The editor of Russia's recently closed Catholic weekly has urged the Vatican not to give in to further Orthodox demands by agreeing to downgrade his country's Catholic dioceses, writes Jonathan Luxmoore.

"I'm not a diplomat, but I do know this would be seen as betraying the memory of our martyrs," said Viktor Khrul, whose award-winning Svet Evangelia newspaper was unexpectedly ordered to shut down at Christmas by Russia's newly appointed Italian archbishop, Paolo Pezzi. "Some people sense a new ‘Ostpolitik' is under way which will have unpleasant consequences for local Catholic communities."

The prominent lay Catholic, who also teaches at Moscow State University, was commenting on an early December demand by the Moscow Patriarchate's external relations director, Metropolitan Kirill, who said that the 2002 creation of four Catholic dioceses in Russia had blocked "any possibility of achieving common aims".

He said many Catholics believed that Archbishop Pezzi was pursuing a "silent Church strategy" in the hope of a wider Catholic-Orthodox rapprochement. "We've been told we'll have to make sacrifices here if a big ecumenical deal is to come about," said Mr Khrul, "[but] neither our archbishop nor the Vatican has even questioned the Orthodox demand."

"Ostpolitik" was the term widely used for the Vatican's direct contacts with Communist regimes under Pope Paul VI in the 1970s, which were often resented by local church leaders.