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Russian Orthodox play down reports of papal visit to return icon
2003-111-2
5/20/2003
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[Episcopal News Service]
Russian Orthodox Church officials are downplaying reports that Pope John Paul II is hoping to visit Russian this summer to return a venerated Russian icon.
Some news agencies are reporting the possibility of a papal stopover in Kazan, the capital of the semi-autonomous Russian republic Tatarstan, in August on the way to Mongolia, in order to return the icon of Our Lady of Kazan. The reports were bolstered in April when the Russian and Italian prime ministers said at a joint press conference in Rome that they would support a papal visit to Russia, a persistent dream of the pope.
A papal visit to Russia would be impossible, according to Vitaly Litvin, the Russian government's representative to the Holy See, without the consent of the Orthodox Church and Patriarch Alexy II. In recent years there has been considerable tension over what the Russians regard as proselytizing by the Roman Catholics. The relations hit a crisis point a year ago when the Vatican created four fully-fledged dioceses in Russia. In response the Russian government expelled several Catholic clergy without explanation.
The Russian church would appreciate the return of the icon, according to Archpriest Vsevolod Cahplin, deputy of the Moscow Patriarch's Department of External Relations. He noted, however, that many objects of similar spiritual, historical and artistic value have been returned to Russia by lesser dignitaries. 'It has never required a personal trip for such high persons as the head of a church or a state,' he said. 'The return of the icon should not be a pretext for the pope's visit to Russia.'
Art experts said in interviews that the icon, kept in the pope's apartment, was a revered 18th century copy of the original icon. The original, discovered near Moscow in the 16th century after the city was conquered by Ivan the Terrible, disappeared from a Moscow cathedral in 1904.
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