Russian Orthodox Church

MOSCOW -- "Nuns" in bloomers and a brothel in a Franciscan monastery -- the story was too juicy to ignore, said a reporter for Russia's biggest-selling newspaper. Editors made her original story even juicier by concocting details and commissioning a suggestive illustration. But the report printed last week by Komsomolskaya Pravda was false, in the first place, and circumstances surrounding it indicate that the Roman Catholic Church in Russia might have been deliberately set up.

The Rev. Benedict Tallant seems like a typical Alabama preacher with his GMC pickup truck and slow drawl, yet the three-armed cross and onion-shaped copper dome on his little brick church stand out in the Bible Belt. Tallant--Father Benedict to parishioners--is pastor of St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, the oldest patriarchal Russian congregation in the South. Just as Roman Catholic churches report to the pope in Rome, tiny St.

A bitter rift that emerged this year between Russia's Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches could be easing, as senior clerics on each side have released letters outlining their positions but appealing for a repair of the breach. The frank exchange appeared to be the beginning of a formal dialogue on the issues that have been dividing the two churches, after months of recrimination since the Vatican announced in February that it was establishing formal dioceses in Russia.

Russian passport officers have refused reentry to a Roman Catholic bishop who was returning to his diocese, in effect revoking his right to live and work in Russia and escalating the country's conflict with the Vatican, Catholic officials said Saturday. Bishop Jerzy Mazur, a Polish citizen who is one of four Catholic bishops in Russia, arrived at Moscow's main international airport Friday with a valid visa, saw it canceled on the spot and was forced to fly back to Warsaw.

He may never set foot on Russian soil in his lifetime, but Pope John Paul II visited in spirit and image, at least, in a teleconference Saturday night that was criticized by the Russian Orthodox patriarch as "an invasion." The gothic spires of Moscow's Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception loomed against a pearly evening sky as hundreds flocked to the church to pray with the pope.

The Vatican announced Monday that it will establish four formal dioceses within Russia, touching a theological nerve and sparking a round of condemnations from the Russian Orthodox Church, which accused the Roman Catholics of violating its "canonical territory." The decision may prompt a temporary freeze in relations between the two churches, said Metropolitan Kirill, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church's external relations commission.

MOSCOW--The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has repeated his fierce opposition to a visit to Russia by Pope John Paul, citing Roman Catholic activity in the region. He said he won't meet the pope if the pontiff decides to visit. Patriarch Alexy II said "the Vatican continues to proselytize on the territories of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, trying to convert people christened as Orthodox or rooted in Orthodoxy," ITAR-Tass reported last week.

An old woman wearing peasant clothes and a kerchief stands in front of a Russian church topped by gilded cupolas. The scene could be out of a long-ago century if it weren't for a Ford pickup parked nearby and a TV antenna sprouting from a house.

Since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, few dreams have driven Pope John Paul II more passionately than that of a "total communion" between Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox churches that left the Vatican fold nearly 1,000 years ago. But rather than speeding such a reunion, the end of the Cold War has, to his dismay, given rise to bitter rivalry between Orthodox and Catholic communities in the former Soviet bloc that are reemerging from decades of Communist rule.

Pope John Paul II, starting one of the most delicate missions of his 23-year reign, urged Ukraine's Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities Saturday to bury centuries of religious feuding, and assured wary Orthodox believers that he had not come here to raid their flock in search of converts. "Let us recognize our faults as we ask forgiveness for the errors committed in both the distant and recent past," the pontiff from neighboring Poland said in fluent Ukrainian after he landed.