PERSPECTIVES: The pope's visit to Ukraine (05/06/01)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The pope's visit to Ukraine

In June, Pope John Paul II visits Ukraine, one of the few countries where he hasn't yet been. Given his age, ill health and frailty, Ukraine will surely be one of the last places John Paul visits. It's also likely to be one of the most significant, involving deep historical tides, majestic, mysterious and tragic in their millennial sweep.

According to historian Samuel Huntington, there is a "fault line" between East and West that runs right through Ukraine. Huntington's fault line is shorthand for the 1,000-year rift that goes back to the Great Schism of 1054. That's when the pope in Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicated each other. Ever since, there has been a "Western" Catholic Christianity based in Rome and an "Eastern" Orthodox one that hearkens back to Byzantium. Before the schism, Europe had been a cohesive entity. Kyiv was at the center of its political, cultural and commercial activities. One of the greatest rulers of Rus', Yaroslav the Wise, had sons-in-law who included the kings of Norway and France. His own father-in-law was the King of Sweden. With the schism in 1054 - the year Yaroslav died - those kinds of links ceased.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks and Moscow began to style itself as "The Third Rome." The Russian Church partnered with Imperial Muscovy to define "correct" or "orthodox" worship. Over the centuries, the rift between East and West deepened into a cultural and political chasm that, ironically, reached its culmination with the Cold War. I say ironically, because the East - the Soviet Union, with its capital in Moscow - was militantly atheist. Nonetheless, Soviet-style Marxism that insisted on "orthodox" thinking (the Party line), along with a messianic goal - the global triumph of communism - had a "Third Rome" mentality.

"We will bury you!" Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed. And the Soviets very nearly did. At its height, the Soviet Union controlled half of Eurasia. Its missiles threatened the very existence of human life on our planet. In 1978 - the year the College of Cardinals broke with nearly five centuries of tradition and elected a non-Italian pope - the USSR looked like it would last forever. The election of Karol Wojtyla, a Slavic pope, came as a thunderbolt. Only recently did we learn how shaken the Soviets were by this turn of events. They of course, had nothing but contempt for religion. When told that the Pope did not approve of communism and its practices, Joseph Stalin is said to have asked mockingly, "And how many divisions does the Pope have?"

A year into his reign, Pope John Paul II visited his native Poland and the Kremlin discovered that this pope doesn't need any divisions. In an officially atheist country, tens of millions of people flocked to his masses. The armed communist guards, in nominal control of the giant religious rallies, were hopelessly outnumbered. People looked at the sea of believers and saw the balance of power shifting. Soon after the pope's visit to Poland, Lech Walesa organized the independent labor movement, Solidarity, and with that, the Soviet Empire began the inexorable slide to its demise in 1991.

When the Vatican announced the pope's June visit to Ukraine, Moscow Patriarch Alexei II reacted with outrage. John Paul's visit, he warned, could further strain relations between his Church and the Vatican. The Russian Federation also protested. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov met with the pope and raised the issue of his visit to Ukraine "in a frank form." That's diplomatese for saying he's really upset.

So, why should the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian government care whether the pope visits Ukraine? Go back to Huntington's thesis about the fault line between East and West and the Great Schism of 1054. For three and a half centuries, Ukraine had been part of the Russian Empire, "the East." The Pope represents "the West." Ecclesiastically, Ukrainian Orthodox believers are part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Today, in fact, more than half the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate are actually in Ukraine.

In the 1920s, Kyiv Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky tried to establish a separate Ukrainian Orthodox Church, but the Russian Church blocked him. From 1927, the NKVD (Soviet secret police) kept Lypkivsky under house arrest before shooting him in 1937. The Russian metropolitan, Sergei, also was arrested in 1927, but he was soon released whereupon he published a declaration that Russian historian Nikita Struve describes as having "transformed the Church into an active ally of the Soviet government." Imperial habits die hard and today, the Moscow Patriarchate is determined to hold onto its Ukrainian parishes and believers. Moscow's secular authorities support their goal. There's a long history of that kind of cooperation.

Today, Patriarch Filaret heads the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate. In the Soviet era, he had been second in command of the Russian Church. Since Ukraine's independence, he and others, including Metropolitan Lypkivsky's spiritual heirs, have been involved in complex religious politics that I don't pretend to understand, but the thrust is to steer toward independence for Ukraine's Orthodox Church.

The announcement of the pope's visit gave Patriarch Filaret a high-profile opportunity to distance himself and his people from Moscow. Instead of fearing the pope's visit, he welcomes it. Filaret, no doubt, will be there to greet the holy father when he comes to Kyiv, and the news media will be sure to leap at the colorful photo ops of East meeting West. Filaret will be seen as a leader. In fact, by extending his welcome to Pope John Paul II, Filaret is already acting as the leader of Ukraine's Orthodox faithful. Now, he's talking about having Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew also visit Kyiv. Patriarch Alexei II doesn't like that idea either.

After Kyiv, the pope visits Lviv. There he will surely mention the Greek-Catholic leader, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky stood out among Europe's religious leaders by writing to Heinrich Himmler in 1942, condemning the Nazi destruction of Ukrainian Jewry. I'm sure there's no comparable letter from the Moscow Patriarch to Lazar Kaganovich condemning the Famine-Genocide during which millions of Ukrainians - most of them Orthodox believers - were starved to death in the 1930s.

Having endured centuries of Moscow's domination - often with tragic results - Ukraine today consistently articulates an orientation on the West. Twenty-some years ago, a young and vigorous John Paul II provided awe-inspiring leadership to defeat communism, opening the door for Ukraine's independence. Now, in the twilight of his papacy, he is using the last of his energies to nudge East and West closer together. What better place to do it than Kyiv? I'll bet Yaroslav the Wise, "Europe's father-in-law" in 1054, is smiling down from heaven.

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