Pope, Gromyko Discuss Soviet Catholics

Pope John Paul II met for almost two hours Wednesday with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, their first encounter in more than six years, and both men emerged smiling despite what appeared to be intractable differences.

The Vatican spokesman said they had discussed “peace in the world and the situation of Roman Catholics in the Soviet Union.” Other Vatican sources said the pontiff devoted much of the meeting to the plight of Catholics in the Soviet Union’s Russian Republic and in the Soviet Baltic republics, especially heavily Catholic Lithuania and Latvia.

Gromyko, on the final day of a three-day visit to Italy that has focused mainly on Soviet opposition to President Reagan’s Strategic Defensive Initiative, popularly called “Star Wars,” cheerfully characterized his meeting with the Pope by saying, “It was good.” He made the remark to reporters in the papal library at the end of the unusual session.

The pontiff looked on amiably as Gromyko denied that the question of a papal visit to the Soviet Union had come up in their conversation. “The question was not involved,” Gromyko said. The Soviet Union last year denied John Paul permission to visit Lithuania, and Vatican sources said the pontiff complained to Gromyko.

‘As the Americans Say’

During what looked to reporters like a jolly exchange at the end of the meeting, Gromyko gave the pontiff a lacquered Russian box, and quipped in English, “It’s a small memento, as the Americans say.”

The pontiff in turn gave Gromyko a leather-bound Russian translation of his World Day of Peace message delivered last Jan. 1, as well as three papal medals in gold, silver and bronze.

As he said goodby to the Pope, Gromyko said, “Best wishes” in English. John Paul looked quizzically at the Soviet foreign minister and, after a moment’s hesitation, said, “si, “ in Italian, then in English, “yes, best wishes,” almost as if the salutation required some time for reflection.

Neither side disclosed details of the unusually long conversation, but Vatican sources had suggested to journalists earlier in the day that the Pope intended to skirt political issues and focus his message to Gromyko almost entirely on the state of the church behind the Iron Curtain.

As the two men talked, hundreds of Italian youths staged a nonviolent protest march against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in front of Italy’s Quirinal presidential palace, where Gromyko went to lunch with President Sandro Pertini after his meeting with the Pope.

The Soviet foreign minister is expected to leave Rome early today for Spain, whose Socialist prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez, spoke only a few days ago of “a certain tension” in his relations with the United States.

Gromyko’s current Italy-Spain trip, his first visit to Western Europe aside from formal conferences since the breakoff of Geneva arms talks with the United States in 1983, has been seen as an attempt to drive a wedge between America and its European allies before the resumption of new U.S.-Soviet arms talks March 12 in Geneva.