Francis takes peace mission to Caucasus

The Pope’s three-day visit to Georgia and Azerbaijan that was due to begin yesterday marks the latest papal initiative to foster dialogue and understanding in the world’s troubled regions.

With just under 300 Catholics, Muslims making up more than 90 per cent of the 9.5 million population and a president, Ilham Aliyev, with a highly questionable human rights record, Azerbaijan is not an obvious location for a papal visit. But for Pope Francis, who visits the country tomorrow, it is part of his plan to bring reconciliation and peace to the “east- meets-west” Caucasus region, a part of the world afflicted by military conflicts yet given little attention by Western media.

Azerbaijan has been in a long-running battle with Armenia, a country the Pope visited in June. Since the 1990s the dispute between the two has centred on the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Fr Stefan Kormancik, a Salesian from Slovakia who is one of six priests serving in the country, explained that Francis’ trip was a “very important step for reconciliation” and would help rebalance perceptions that he might be siding with Armenia, given he had visited there first.

The Pope’s one-day visit to the Azeri capital of Baku is expected to get wall-to-wall coverage by state-run television, with thousands turning out to see him. Fr Kormancik explained that many in the Muslim country, which has a secular constitution, revere the Pope as a “holy man”.

Francis’ visit to Azerbaijan was twinned with a trip to Georgia, a country still scarred by a war with Russia in 2008 over the disputed South Ossetia region.

“My hope is that the Pope’s visit will put Georgia back into the international horizon again. Since 2008 our war has not really been in the news,” Tamara Grdzelidze, the Georgian Ambassador to the Holy See told The Tablet. And she was fully expecting the Pope to mention the importance of her country’s “territorial integrity”.

The focus on reconciliation in the Caucasus region goes hand-in-hand with the Pope’s attempts to heal the East-West divide within Christianity, as witnessed by his   historic meeting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow in Cuba earlier this year.

In Georgia, which has Christian roots dating back to AD 320, Francis will today visit the Orthodox cathedral in Mtskheta and meet the country’s Patriarch Ilia II. They will not, however, pray together as the Georgians are the most sceptical members of the Orthodox family when it comes to dialogue with Rome: last week they refused to give their full assent to a major Catholic-Orthodox document seeking to overcome historical disagreements between the two Churches.

Speaking to The Tablet this week, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, said: “Following in the footsteps of Pope Saint John Paul II … the Holy Father carries with him a message of peace and harmony among the nations, together with a word of encouragement for the Catholic communities in countries where they constitute a rather small minority. These visits to the region help deepen relations with the Georgian Orthodox Church, while facilitating interreligious dialogue in Azerbaijan.”