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Patriarch faults Pope
Criticizes plan for Ukraine trip
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Aleksei II of Moscow has complained that Pope John Paul II did not officially notify the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev before finalizing his plans to visit Ukraine in June.
In an interview with the Italian publication Famiglia Cristiana, Patriarch Aleksei also expressed concern that when the bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church wrote to Pope John Paul, asking him to postpone his visit, “the Vatican purely and simply reconfirmed the program for that trip.” [For further news on the Pope’s plans for the visit to Ukraine, see Follow Up, page 26.]
If the Pope really wanted to improve relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, Aleksei continued, he should “follow the recommendations of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev.” That Orthodox leader—the head of one of three separate groups claiming to speak for the Ukrainian Orthodox community—enjoys the support of the Moscow Patriarchate. The Russian Orthodox leadership has classified the other Ukrainian groups as “schismatic.”
Patriarch Aleksei also repeated his oft-expressed insistence that in order to improve ecumenical relations, the Vatican must curtail the activities of the Byzantine-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church, and stop “proselytism” by Catholics in Russia.
The Patriarch’s latest complaints came at a time when the Pontiff’s visit to Greece, and his effort to cultivate relationships with skeptical Orthodox Christians there, had apparently stirred interest among Russian believers in hosting a visit by Pope John Paul. When a web site hosted by the Russian Orthodox Church offered an opinion poll on the issue, 57 percent of the visitors said they would like to see the Pope in Russia. The poll was quickly suspended.
However, hostility toward the Catholic Church clearly has not disappeared among the Russian Orthodox clergy. Even as that poll was being conducted, a group of priests demonstrated in the town of Jaroslavl, on the Volga River, to protest a visit there by the Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Moscow. As the archbishop blessed a small chapel newly opened by Divine Word missionaries, the Orthodox clerics led a group of about 100 people chanting slogans, demanding that Catholics stay out of traditionally Orthodox lands.
Catholic priest killed in Siberia
Career criminal charged with crime
Father Jan Franzkevich, a Melkite Catholic priest serving in Siberia, was beaten to death on Easter Sunday.
Police officials in the village of Yartsevo, in north-central Siberia, reported that Father Franzkevich died of massive trauma to the head, including a broken skull, after being beaten with a metal bar. He was found tied to a bed in an apartment adjoining a chapel where he served.
Authorities have arrested a veteran criminal, Alexei Vacilevich Kornilov, and charged him with the murder. To date, no motive has been established for the crime.
Father Franzkevich was born in 1924 in Poland. He was ordained to the priesthood of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Lebanon in 1986. In 1993 the Melkite Archbishop of Beirut, Habib Bacha, sent him to work in Siberia. He exercised pastoral responsibilities for a wide geographical area on the northern edge of Krasnoyarsk.
While visiting Yartsevo, one of the villages that he served, Father Franzkevich usually stayed in an apartment attached to the chapel there. It was in this apartment that he was killed.
Bishop Jerzy Mazur, the apostolic administrator for eastern Siberia, presided at a funeral Mass on April 19 at the cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Irkutsk.