A new Vatican move has worsened the always uneasy relationship between the Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church. There are misunderstandings on both sides. Yet the Orthodox and the Catholics continue to need each other. Can they set their sights on the real challenges?

?Otche nash, sushchiy na nebesah, da svyatitsya imya tvoye? ? the text is unmistakably a Russian rendition of the ?Our Father?, but it sounds strangely modern and somewhat mundane to a Russian ear. Fr Sergei Timashev is celebrating Mass at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in the centre of Moscow, the main Roman Catholic church of the Russian capital. Less than a mile away, in the Saint John the Baptist church, Orthodox believers still recite the ?Our Father? in Church Slavonic, basically a medieval language, which is still used in the Orthodox service but is difficult to understand for Russians with no religious education.

There may not be so many people listening to Fr Sergei, but they are native Russians, participating according to the practices adopted by the Second Vatican Council, in a service conducted in the vernacular language. And that ? as well their recognition of the Pope in Rome as the ultimate spiritual authority ? sets them apart from the parishioners of Saint John the Baptist, who belong to Russia?s oldest and largest Christian confession ? the Orthodox. There are 65,000 Catholics in Moscow alone, and up to 600,000 in the whole of Russia, according to representatives of the Catholic Church. ?Much less than that?, insists the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate.

Last week relations between Moscow and the Vatican were probably at their lowest ebb since the collapse of Communism in 1991 and the subsequent re-creation of Catholic church structures in Russia. For the Vatican has now decided to raise its four ?apostolic administrations? in the Russian Federation to fully-fledged diocese status. Their centres are in Moscow, Saratov ? a big city on the Volga river ? for the Urals, and Novosibirsk and Irkutsk for western and eastern Siberia respectively.

The decision provoked a storm of protest from the Moscow Patriarchate. Patriarch Alexis and the Holy Synod released a statement that the move was ?unfriendly? and just proved that the Catholic Church viewed Russia as a field for its missionary activity. A visit to Moscow by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, was ?postponed indefinitely?, as are all contacts with the Vatican. Viktor Malukhin, the Patriarch?s press secretary, said: ?These latest moves by the Vatican make a visit by John Paul II to Russia even more hypothetical.?

The Orthodox hierarchy were particularly incensed that Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, head of the Catholic bishops? conference in Russia, formerly with the rank of ?apostolic administrator?, was appointed not only archbishop of the newly formed Holy Virgin diocese in Moscow, but also elevated to the title of metropolitan. He has been relieved of the titular episcopacy which he held for the previous ten years. This, according to the Patriarchate, makes Russia a ?province? of the Roman Catholic Church and thus infringes on the rights of the Orthodox as the ?traditional? Christian denomination.

The relationship between the two Churches was always uneasy. The Russians have bitter memories of Catholic Poland waging war on Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, even briefly occupying Moscow and putting a puppet tsar on the throne in the early seventeenth century. Later, when a weakened Poland was divided between Russia, Prussia and Austria, the Orthodox Church tried to convert the local Catholic population. Catholics in the Russian Empire traditionally came from the western areas of the country, such as Poland and Lithuania, or Germany, which since the time of Peter the Great supplied officers to the Imperial army. In the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik coup, predominantly Catholic Poland and Lithuania became independent (although the latter was occupied by Stalin in 1940), while state persecution of religion in Russia nearly did away with the Catholic presence there altogether. Having paid a very heavy price in collaboration, the Russian Orthodox Church survived Communist oppression and managed to establish contacts with the Vatican in the 1960s, after Pope Paul VI and the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras lifted the mutual excommunication, paving the way for dialogue between the two ?sister Churches?.

In 1991, as the Communist empire disintegrated, the Catholic Church began restoring its structures in Russia. At that time, as Archbishop Kondrusiewicz (a mild-mannered prelate, born to a Polish family in what used to be a Soviet republic of Belorussia) likes to recall, there were only 10 Catholic parishes and 8 priests in the whole of Russia. Today, according to him, there are 212 parishes and nearly 300 priests, the majority of them still foreigners. The first native priests were ordained in 1999, but their number is less than 15 per cent of the total.

Since 1991 religious freedom has swept across Russia. Weakened by decades of Soviet repression, the Orthodox Church found itself confronting multiple tasks ? recreating parish life, recovering church property, building new seminaries and training thousands of priests. In addition it has to compete for the souls of Russians with Protestant preachers, New Age cults, permissive pop culture and nearly total ignorance about all matters religious in a society which was subjected to brutal atheistic brainwashing for more than 70 years. I remember a few years ago overhearing a conversation on the bus. One young woman asked another: ?Tell me, who is this Roman Pope? Is he a Christian, a Buddhist or something else??

Statistical data on the religious situation in Russia are somewhat confusing. According to a recent poll conducted by the Russian Academy of Sciences together with the German Friedrich Ebert Foundation, diehard atheists constitute no more than 15 per cent of the population. But only 38 per cent firmly say they believe in God (irrespective of religious denomination). The mass of people in between is either indifferent, hesitant or tends to believe in the occult, magic or various New Age doctrines. Moreover, there is a paradox: more people say they are Orthodox than say they believe in God. In the spiritual chaos of post-Communist existence, Orthodox Christianity is seen by many as a nation-defining phenomenon, a cultural identity which incurs no obligation to go to church or observe Lent. The Orthodox Church is usually named third in the ?Who do you trust?? polls, after President Vladimir Putin and the army. But while polling on religious issues is notoriously difficult and open to different interpretations, some data indicate that only 20 per cent of Orthodox believers go to church several times a year, and only about 5 per cent every week.

In these conditions, the activities of the Catholic Church are viewed with deep suspicion by the Orthodox hierarchy. It uses the terms ?traditsionnaya confessiya? ? ?traditional denomination?, and ?kanonicheskaya territoriya? ? ?canonical territory? ? to define its historical supremacy in Russia. Charges of ?proselytising? started to be levelled against the Catholics almost as soon as the apostolic administrations were created. The Patriarchate protested when their number was increased, when the Catholic bishops? conference was created, and when the Pope visited Ukraine (where the majority of Orthodox believers officially belong to the Kiev branch of the Russian Orthodox Church). The latest decision by the Vatican to establish dioceses in Russia has been met with such indignation that representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate refused to go into the BBC radio studio in Moscow together with Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, leaving me to arrange separate interviews with him and Igor Vyzhanov from the external relations department of the Patriarchate.

?The creation of four dioceses is a purely administrative matter?, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz argued, ?and does not change facts on the ground.? To which Mr Vyzhanov later replied: ?There were hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of Catholics in the Russian Empire, especially among the Poles, the Lithuanians and the Germans, but there was never an elaborate administrative structure in place like the one we see today in a country where the number of Catholics is tens of times smaller. The new structure is geared for an active and sustained recruitment of believers in the years to come. This is what we call proselytising.?

The Patriarchate says that its own bishoprics in Europe or elsewhere look after mostly ethnic Russians and other traditionally Orthodox people and do not engage in active missionary work. The Catholics reply that they do not need to convert the Orthodox. ?We recognise all the sacraments of the Orthodox Church as absolutely valid?, says Archbishop Kondrusiewicz. ?The more faithful Orthodox people are in Russia, the better. I?ll be the first to rejoice at this.? As for the believers? ethnicity, the archbishop points out: ?The Church is universal. We do not ask for a blood sample if somebody comes to a Catholic church. And I am pretty sure that if, for example, a German walks into an Orthodox church in Berlin, he won?t be turned away.?

The Catholic hierarchy in Russia insists that the latest Vatican move is within the existing legal framework. This is not disputed by the Patriarchate. ?It?s not a question of law, it?s a question of ethics?, says Igor Vyzhanov. ?Proselytising does not mean only direct conversions. If the Catholics call us a ?sister Church?, then they should have known better than to steal potential believers from us. The Roman Church should have helped her Eastern sister to her feet, rather than take advantage of her current difficulties.?

Independent observers see these complaints as a sign of the weakness of the Orthodox Church, which feels it is facing a much stronger and better financed competitor for the souls of the Russians. ?After the establishment of these bishoprics, every single Catholic priest will be viewed by the local authorities as a more or less direct representative of the Vatican itself?, says Ilya Arkhipov, a journalist covering religious affairs. ?The Catholics will feel much more free to demand plots of land for churches and licences to open schools and seminaries.? In a private conversation, one of the high-ranking Catholic prelates in Russia has confirmed this point.

In 1997 the Orthodox Church successfully lobbied for a new law on religious organisations, which contains implicit advantages for so-called ?traditional religious denominations? ? by which Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Buddhism are usually meant. The law met with criticism from human rights groups and was seen at the time as mostly aimed at evangelical preachers and New Age sects. Roman Catholicism is not named as being ?traditional? for Russia. This denial was always hotly contested by Archbishop Kondrusiewicz and the Catholic bishops? conference of Russia. They have pointed to the existence of a Catholic diocese in Imperial Russia, when there was a see in St Petersburg, held by 27 successive Catholic archbishops before the Bolshevik takeover in 1917.

The Vatican?s move to establish fully-fledged dioceses is evidently an attempt to change facts on the ground in order to strengthen the Catholics? standing with Russian officialdom. The latter tends to favour the Orthodox Church as a ?national Russian? Church. There have been numerous cases in Russian provinces where the authorities, at the request of local Orthodox priests, have hindered efforts by other religious confessions to build houses of worship or open schools.

This in turn is the phenomenon of post-Communist Russia ? the more active the Orthodox parish, the more likely it is to be very conservative in outlook, the more mistrustful and downright hostile to foreigners and especially non-Orthodox Christians. The historian and social science researcher Andrei Zubov says that most priests and active parishioners tend to see the world in black and white. ?It is quite natural for a Russian generally to think in absolutes. In all matters religious, the tendency is increased by the spiritual vacuum which has been created by the collapse of the Soviet system with its ideological props?, he says. ?Most of the believers in this country are neophytes who 15 years ago would hardly have known who Jesus Christ was. For them only Orthodox Christianity will do, and those who think differently are heretics. That?s why there is so little support for ecumenical ideas on the parish level. It?s just too complicated for the majority of believers ? and many priests too.?

Dr Zubov is one of those who helped to formulate the social dimension of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was adopted in 2000. In his view, quite a few people at the top of the Orthodox hierarchy, including Patriarch Alexis II, understand very well that there is much more in common between the Catholics and the Orthodox than there are differences. But they cannot say that in the open for fear of provoking a split in the Church between the more moderate minority and the conservative majority.

This seems to coincide with the view one hears in private from the representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate who, while making official remonstrations in public, still maintain a good working relationship with the Catholics. ?It?ll take at least 30 years before the mass of believers is ready for a change in attitude?, an official at the Patriarchate?s external relations department told me. ?The Catholics just don?t want to understand ? you do not rush things in this country, like they do establishing their dioceses. You do it slowly. They want us to agree to the Pope?s visit here. Do those people in the Vatican want thousands of people led by priests demonstrating in the centre of Moscow and throwing stones at us in the Patriarchate, so ecumenical and full of brotherly love? Does John Paul II really want riots in Moscow instead of peace and reconciliation??

Off the record, some people in the Patriarchate concede that they are sorry that Cardinal Kasper?s visit had to be cancelled. He was to have been received by Patriarch Alexis himself ? a rare and promising sign. Sources in the Patriarchate point an accusing finger at the local Catholic bishops in Russia, who, according to those sources, ?had lobbied at the highest level in the Vatican to get the decision on the dioceses through at this very delicate moment?.

The moment that the Patriarchate?s repres-entatives refer to is indeed very delicate for the Moscow hierarchy. They mean the efforts at rapprochement which recently began between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, which is commonly referred to as the ?white Church? ? the mostly Russian Church in exile which severed all links with Moscow in the wake of Patriarch Sergei?s decision in 1927 to recognise the Soviet authorities and start co-operating with them. The ?white Church? ? as opposed to the ?red? one which remained in the USSR ? has inherited most of the overseas property of the pre-revolutionary Orthodox Church, some of it invaluable, like the world-famous St Mary Magdalene church on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem or St Alexander?s Court near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Fanatically monarchist and anti-ecumenical, the Orthodox Church Abroad was tending to a flock of several million white Russian ?migr?s in the 1920s and 1930s. It beatified Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1981. With the passage of time, its flock has shrunk to no more than a few hundred thousand at best, and after the collapse of Communism its existence seemed doomed. But the ?white Church?, which has its administrative centre in New York, has stubbornly refused even to speak to the Moscow Patriarchate?s hierarchy, accusing it of selling out to atheistic Communists in the past. Metropolitan Vitaly of the ?white Church? (he was born in 1910) routinely branded the Russian Orthodox Church as being infested with former KGB informers and accused it of ?the sin of ecumenism?.

Alexis II had set his sights on reunification of the two Orthodox Churches a long time ago. Such a move would have immensely enhanced the prestige of the Russian Church among the rest of the world?s autocephalous Orthodox Churches and made Alexis II a truly historical figure. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church beatified the imperial family as martyrs, thus removing one of the obstacles to unity. Late last year Metropolitan Vitaly was removed by the ?white Church? synod in what seemed like a palace coup and replaced by Archbishop Lavr, reportedly a supporter of mending the rift with Moscow. The move to create Catholic dioceses in Russia will be seen by the ?white Church? conservatives in New York as a sign of the weakness of the Moscow Patriarchate and its inability to put its own house in order. Any concession to, not to mention substantial dialogue with, the Vatican may undermine the tortuous process of Orthodox reunification. That is one of the reasons why the Patriarchate?s reaction to the Pope?s decision was so furious. Still, some observers point out that the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad will sooner or later have to bow to Moscow or face the real possibility of near-total extinction. Which means that in the end it is the Moscow Patriarchate which has the stronger position and may proceed without paying too much attention to the increasingly isolated synod in New York.

In the Byzantine world of acute observation of nuances of meaning, attention is being paid to the last phrase of the statement by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. ?Despite the difficulties?, it said, ?the Holy Synod hopes that relations between the Orthodox and the Catholics will develop and will become a vital factor in preserving Christian values in the life of Europe and the world.? Will that approach, in the end, become a common guideline for both Churches as they face the challenge of an increasingly secular society?

Konstantin Eggert is editor and senior correspondent with the BBC Russian Service in Moscow.

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