Pope John Paul's biblical pilgrimage continues.

The continuation of Pope John Paul's biblical pilgrimage will take him this year to Syria, Greece, Ukraine and Armenia, drawing attention to reconciliation of the Catholic Church with the Eastern Orthodox churches. The Pope is insistent that all Christians be committed to unity, and he hopes personally to contribute to "reconciliation and peace among Christians."

However, full communion with Orthodox Christians represents a challenge, with many patriarchs, ideological conflicts, and rivalries among the Orthodox Christians. Although they have been separated from Rome for 1,000 years, the key difficulty revolves around papal supremacy and jurisdiction.

Damascus, Syria

From May 5-9, after a stopover in Malta, John Paul II plans to visit Damascus and Athens as part of his personal pilgrimage to follow in the footsteps of St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. John Paul will be in Damascus on May 5. Syria, a country whose population is 90% Muslim, also has a small Catholic community of 295,000 people, rich in the Maronite, GreekMelkite, Syriac, Armenian, Chaldean and Latin rites which remain faithful to Rome. Syrian Christians boast of being the country of the first Christians and the nation in which Aramaic, the language which Jesus used, is still spoken. They are struggling to move out from the Islamic shadow, and the Holy Father's visit is seen as an opportunity for Christians to remain in their land and rediscover their Christian roots.

Greece

The Pope has been formally invited by the Greek President to visit Greece, where Orthodox Christians represent about 96% of the population and Catholics only about 1%. After initial hesitations, the Orthodox Church no longer objects to the Pope's visit. But despite popular progressive sentiments favouring the papal visit, "the conservative sectors of the Greek clergy and of the faithful are strongly opposed", reports the news agency Zenit. The conservative Orthodox are insisting that Rome has not shown humility and repentance for centuries of alleged misdeeds against Orthodox Christians. There are fears among the Orthodox that Eastern-rite churches which follow Orthodox traditions but which profess loyalty to Rome are trying to win converts to Roman allegiance.

Ukraine

The Pope's forthcoming pilgrimage to Ukraine this June 23-27 could prove to be the most difficult of his travels. Orthodox Ukraine is divided into three camps: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate (14-15 milion faithful), the Kiev Patriarchate in schism with Moscow (3-4 million adherents), and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church (about i million members); the latter two broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. (See C.I., March 2001, p.27.) These divisions are complicating the papal visit enormously, with reactions ranging from cautious to outright hostile. According to Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, recently elected head of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine: "There is not enough will yet in the people, and of course also in the bishops, to make that definitive step (toward reunion). We talk about the union but we do not really desire it yet" (Prairie Messenger Mar. 14, 2001). Husar is the pastor of about 5.5 million Greek Catholics who are loyal to Rome but worship using Eastern rites familiar to the Orthodox ones. Cardinal Marian Jaworski leads 800,000 Ukrainian Latinrite Catholics who are also loyal to Rome but use a liturgy that more closely resembles that used in the West.

The Orthodox accuse Catholics of aggressive proselytizing in Ukraine and "stealing" Orthodox churches, which they admit, however, were Catholic before Stalin forcibly incorporated them into the Orthodox Church. But despite its predominant position in Ukraine, Husar believes that the Orthodox Church is "presumptuous" to believe that it holds veto power over the Pope's visit. The Ukrainian people are hungry for spiritual nourishment and will welcome the Pope warmly, he predicts.

Armenia

Although not yet confirmed by the Vatican, the papal trip to Armenia is scheduled for September 2001, according to the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic church, Karekin II.

Russia

The Russian Orthodox church is adamantly opposed to a papal visit to Russia, where Catholic-Orthodox relations remain poor. As in Ukraine, the Orthodox hierarchy accuses the Catholic Church of "rampant proselytism" and supports the Russian government's ongoing campaign to limit the Catholic minority, which stands at about 500,000 faithful. Orthodoxy claims 60% of the Russian population, but western commentators put the figure of practising Orthodox at only 3% of the population, with the majority of those parishes in western Ukraine. The rest of the population is churchless.