Pope, Gromyko Discuss Peace in Vatican Talk

Pope John Paul II discussed world peace and the situation of Roman Catholics in the Soviet Union with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko today, Vatican officials said.

Gromyko later told reporters that the possibility of a visit by John Paul to the Soviet Union was not raised.

“The question was not involved (in the talks),” Gromyko said. John Paul revealed last year that Moscow had denied him permission to visit Lithuania, a Catholic stronghold in the Soviet Union.

It was Gromyko’s first meeting with the pontiff in nearly six years--a period that saw an upheaval in the Pope’s native Poland and an attempted assassination of John Paul.

Although some reports have linked the assassination plot to the Soviet KGB, the Vatican rolled out a red carpet welcome for Gromyko, posting additional Swiss guards at entrances to the papal apartments in the Apostolic Palace.

The meeting in the papal library lasted almost two hours and also was attended by two top Vatican officials, a deputy Soviet foreign minister and Moscow’s envoy to Italy.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro said the two sides discussed “peace in the world and the situation of Catholics in the Soviet Union.”

No other details of the talks were given.

Leaving the library and passing an honor platoon of Swiss guards, Archbishop Jacques Martin, chief of the papal household, jokingly asked Gromyko, “Are you afraid of this army?”

Gromyko, smiling, answered, “We know that it’s the least dangerous army in the world.”

While Gromyko was meeting with the Pope, hundreds of Italian students staged a rally in the Piazza della Republica in downtown Rome protesting Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan. Demonstrators marched toward the presidential palace but were blocked by police.

Gromyko and his wife later paid a courtesy call on President Sandro Pertini at the palace.