Author:
Publication: Zenit.org
Date: April 25, 2001
Hostility Against Catholic Church
May Be Rising
Vladimir Putin's changes in the
Presidential Commission for Religion indicates that Russia is moving toward
greater secularization, a move that could spell trouble for the Catholic
Church, observers say.
The Russian president has put Orthodox
Metropolitan Bishop Mefodi of Voronezh and Lipetsk on the commission. The
bishop became famous following a 1992 report in the Russian emigrant newspaper
Russkaya Mysl, in which Archbishop Khrizostom of Vilnius branded him a
KGB agent and an atheist. Metropolitan Mefodi neither confirmed nor denied
the accusations.
Putin "has entrusted a secular body
to draw up a religious policy" whose principal features will be a strong
emphasis on the secular nature of the Russia state and the equality of
all confessions before the law," reported the Keston News Service, an agency
that specializes in monitoring religious liberty in the former Soviet Union.
The agency noted, however, that
Putin has made few clear pronouncements on religious policy. "Religion
is evidently not among his highest priorities," Keston said.
"Unlike party apparatchiki Gorbachev
and Yeltsin, Putin's background is with the security services, and state
security is his natural concern," the agency commented. "Thus, religion
usually becomes a priority only when it seems to impinge upon security
issues."
Experts connected with England-based
Keston say that foreign missionaries, especially those from the United
States, are regarded as agents of Western powers, bent on promoting anti-Russian
values among the citizens.
This concern has resulted in the
denial of visas and last year's expulsions of foreign missionaries, as
well as the adoption of a new provincial decree to regulate missionary
activity.
President Putin's religious policy
seems to be in line with the last phase of Boris Yeltsin's. It encourages
the formation of a coalition among the "traditional" confessions, which
in turn are expected to support the consolidation of the state. Those that
fail to do so, risk serious difficulties with the authorities.
"It is likely," the Keston agency
said, "that the Roman Catholic Church will in practice be increasingly
dealt with as a nontraditional confession, even if it is formally considered
a traditional one. In recent years, two Catholic bishops were denied Russian
citizenship and were told by the authorities that they only way they would
be accepted would be if they married a Russian."
As a result, "the bishops cannot
take legal responsibility for their apostolic administrations, and the
Catholic Church is unable to register the latter," the Keston report continued.
"In addition to ongoing difficulties
in winning back property confiscated by the Soviet authorities, an increase
in hostility toward the Catholic presence in Russia is also indicated by
recent incidents of refusal and curtailment of visas for visiting clergy,"
Keston added.
