Ukrainian Catholic Church

A Ukrainian Catholic civil rights activist has been sentenced to seven years in a labor camp followed by five years of internal exile for involvement in a banned church group, a Soviet exile group said Tuesday. The Slavic Mission said Josyf Terelia, 43, was sentenced by the district court at Uzhgorod in the Ukraine on Aug. 20.

Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will hold a historic meeting at the Vatican early next month that could lead the Kremlin to legalize the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church and invite the Pope to Moscow. The Dec. 1 encounter, announced by the Vatican in a brief statement today, will be the first between a Kremlin leader and a pontiff.

Paul Ratushniak, a Van Nuys barber shop owner for 25 years, has died at a Van Nuys hospital. He was 71. A longtime resident of Van Nuys, Ratushniak died Sunday of cancer, said his son, Gary Ratushniak. Born in Saskatchewan, Canada, Ratushniak worked as a barber in Canada before coming to the United States in 1957. He started cutting hair at a barber shop on Van Nuys Boulevard in 1959. Two years later he purchased the business and changed the name to Paul's Barber Shop.

The Vatican said Friday it had begun talks with Soviet diplomats on a possible meeting between Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. It was the Vatican's first official acknowledgement that the Pope and the Soviet leader are likely to hold a historic meeting during Gorbachev's visit to Italy in November.

Pope John Paul II met a senior Soviet envoy this week for talks on religious freedom and the Middle East, the Vatican said. The talks with Yuri Karlov, a personal representative of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, follow reports that the Vatican is studying a possible papal visit to Lebanon. The Polish-born pontiff is also widely expected to have an unprecedented meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev if Gorbachev goes ahead with a visit to Italy in November. "Mr.

Moscow has improved its human rights record but still falls short of its obligations under the Helsinki Accords, the Reagan Administration said Tuesday in a report issued on the eve of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's meeting with President Reagan and President-elect George Bush.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II swept away decades of hostility between Rome and Moscow on Friday, with the Soviet leader promising religious freedom at home, agreeing to diplomatic ties with the Vatican and inviting the pontiff to visit. The first meeting between a Kremlin chief and a Pope was rich in both symbolism and concrete results. Gorbachev obtained a pledge from John Paul to support his perestroika reform policies.

A Soviet human rights commission appealed to the government Tuesday to free the country's remaining religious prisoners in a demonstration of its declared commitment to democracy and civil liberties.

Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, 86, the head of Ukraine's Greek Catholics who returned triumphantly to his homeland in 1991 after 53 years in exile during Soviet rule. Lubachivsky was hailed as a hero by the Vatican for struggling to preserve the church after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin outlawed it in 1946. Greek Catholics have services similar to those of Eastern Orthodox churches but owe allegiance to the pope.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev warned Saturday that his reform program will falter across the country if it stumbles in the Ukraine, the Soviet Union's second-largest republic, which recently has been racked by nationalist, labor and religious unrest. Vladimir A. Ivashko, the new Communist Party leader of the republic and a strong Gorbachev supporter who was elected three days ago after the ousting of conservative Vladimir V.