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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 8, 1983
PAGE 9
The growing implications of Soviet involvement in the attempt to
kill the pope should lead us to question what might have
motivated such a "crime of the century." .••
� the f ay of the election of Karol Wojtyla as fope John Paul II
it was c ear to Moscow that it had to deal with a foriiiiaabie
OE I;'onent.• • • T'Fiis was mos'c"aramatically demonst�atea during his
triumphant visit to Poland in June of 1979, which Moscow now
believes gave rise to Solidarity. Speaking before collective
Polish audiences numbering some six million, the pope•••asserted
that "no country should ever develop at the cost of another, at
the cost of enslavement••• conquest, outrage, exploitation and
death.
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The pontiff's remarks in front of millions of people
represented� unprecedented challenge to the legitimacy of the
communist system and Soviet interests in Eastern Europe.
While the pope's influence on the events in Poland following his
visit and until the imposition of martial law is fairly well
documented, his revitalizing effect on the church in other
Eastern European countries is less well known. In Czechoslova
kia, for example, the Catholic Church is experiencing a remark
able revival which has included widespread underground religious
life with tens of thousands of participants and a clandestine
press.
In Lithuania, a homogeneously Catholic nation with a long record
of historical and cultural ties with Poland, the election of
Wojtyla was greeted with elation. The church there has been
experiencing a dramatic revival since the early 1970's, and has
emerged as the most militant church in the Soviet Union.••• Open
defiance of the regime through unauthorized religious proces
sions, demonstrations and mass petitions of all kinds has become
commonplace.
The pope has firmly; if quietly, supported the
Lithuanians' struggle. He has, for example, refused to appoint
regime-approved church officials, considered collaborators by
most believers.
No less troublesome for the Kremlin has been John Paul II's per
ceived impact on the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Eastern
Rite. The Uniate Church, as it is also known, ha;-for""centuries
commanded the allegiance of the people in the Western Ukraine,
which was incorporated into the Soviet Union following the Nazi
Soviet pact in 1939. As a result, it became an obvious target of
the Soviet drive to extirpate Ukrainian nationalism and was the
only church in the Soviet Union to be outlawed outright. Ever
since that time, the Ukrainian Catholics have been persecuted and
victimized like no other religious community in the Soviet
Union•.•• In the spring of 1980, the pontiff convoked the first
synod of Uniate bishops, which openly called for the restoration
of the church•.•• Despite particularly brutal KGB suppression, an
underground church with as many as 500 priests and 3 bishops is
reported to be flourishing in the Ukraine. In February 1983 John
Paul II convened another synod of the Uniate bishops and urged
them to intensify their efforts in connection with the thousandth
anniversary of Christianity in the Ukraine in 1988.