Russia is awaiting the Pope” “” “

“Time shows that the future of the world community risks being played out without the participation of the Church, if the joint action of the bishops and the work of the Synod is not stepped up”, declared the Apostolic Administrator of European Russia, Msgr. Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz , who has lived in Moscow for the last ten years. We interviewed him. Why, in your view, does the Church risk being excluded from the progress of the world community? “The world is changing so rapidly that new problems are being posed every day. Russia too has radically changed over the last few years. The events of these last few weeks, since the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, show that the contemporary world, so advanced from the technological point of view, is in reality extremely fragile. The Churches are called to give responses to the questions being posed by a world that is changing so rapidly”. What responses, in particular, is the Church called to give in central and eastern Europe? “Our Churches have been persecuted for three generations. Now we’re called to rebuild their structure both in the moral and in the material sense. We must construct a new Church that is called ‘people of God’ through evangelization, catechesis, pastoral work, the involvement of the laity. In this work the role of the bishop is very important: ‘ubi episcopus-ibi ecclesia’, where the bishop is, there is the Church. And our communities have been able to grow over these last few years thanks to the Pope’s establishment of the four apostolic administrations into which Russia is divided”. You are accused of proseletyzing and of having invaded the ‘canonical territory’ of the Russian Orthodox Church. How do you reply to this charge? “Proselytism has been condemned by the Catholic Church since Vatican Council II. And the same Council declared that the sacraments of the Orthodox Church are also valid for Catholics. I can go to an Orthodox church and adore the Most Holy Sacrament just as I do in a Catholic church. Of course, if someone comes to me and asks to become Catholic I cannot ask for his passport and then send him packing. The notion of ‘canonical territory’ is meaningless: Jesus told his disciples to go and preach the Gospel to all peoples”. How long must we wait for a visit by John Paul II to Russia? “We’re ready for the Pope’s visit, and even the Orthodox Patriarch does not exclude it, on certain conditions. We also have to take into consideration public opinion: after the Pope’s apostolic visit to the Ukraine, 53% of the public declared itself favourable to a visit by John Paul II to Russia”. In your intervention to the Synod you appealed for a reinforcement of episcopal collegiality, taking the oriental Churches as an example. What does that mean? “Jesus wished that St. Peter and the apostles should form the ‘apostolic college’. The bishops, successors of the apostles, are called to form, with the successor of Peter, a college modelled on that of the first apostles. In practice, there are many expressions of episcopal collegiality. One of these is the Synod, but this collegiality is also expressed in the episcopal conferences and among the episcopal conferences, among the dioceses. It helps to tackle problems together, to promote twinning arrangements and joint projects. When, for example, a law detrimental to the Catholic Church was approved in Russia four years ago, if it hadn’t been for the Pope springing to our defence we would have been left on our own. That could have been an occasion in which a strong episcopal collegiality would have been of great help”.