Architect of Vatican's policy toward Communist East dies (07/19/98)

Architect of Vatican's policy toward Communist East dies

by Jan de Weydenthal
RFE/RL Newsline

ROME - Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, who was widely considered an architect of the Holy See's policy of rapprochement with the Communist East, died during the week of June 7 in Rome. He was 83.

In a commemorative message to the College of Cardinals, Pope John Paul II said that Cardinal Casaroli was "a passionate builder of peaceful relations between individuals and nations and, by employing the utmost diplomatic sensitivity, made brave and significant steps, especially in improving the situation of the Church in Eastern Europe."

Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Eastern Churches, said that Cardinal Casaroli "managed to extract concrete, tangible results" in bilateral dealings with individual communist regimes.

Cardinal Casaroli came to prominence in the early 1960s, when Pope John XXIII initiated a policy of gradually expanding contacts with Communist countries.

In 1988 Cardinal Casaroli visited Moscow again. He was subsequently credited with successfully persuading the Soviet officials to allow greater religious freedom for Catholics in Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Russia itself. A year later, in December 1989, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II met at the Vatican. Less than four months later the Vatican and Moscow exchanged ambassadors.

In December 1990 Cardinal Casaroli resigned as the Vatican's secretary of state.

Cardinal Casaroli was universally acknowledged as a consummate diplomat and skillful negotiator who was absolutely loyal to the Church. His role was essentially that of a facilitator - expanding the Church's work in the ideologically hostile Communist environment, while negotiating a place for the Church under those difficult conditions.

The election of Pope John Paul resulted in major changes to that approach. This became particularly noticeable during the papal visit to Poland in 1979.

The impact of the visit on Poland was dramatic, undermining the authority of the established leadership and encouraging popular self-organization. In 1978 the first popular social movement, Solidarity, had risen to prominence through a popular rebellion against the power of the state. While that movement was subsequently crushed by force, the spirit of public independence and social autonomy from state control survived and spread to other countries and societies.

Following Cardinal Casaroli's retirement, the pope was reported to have said that it was "providential" to have worked with him during the times of "historic" change in European and world politics.

Speaking in Moscow on June 9, Anatolii Krasikov, former head of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's press office, said Cardinal Casaroli was a statesman of international stature "who like few others left his own mark on the time in which we live."