Pope Urged to Go to Ukraine, ‘Fight Atheism’

Pope John Paul II was urged by a Ukrainian-Argentine bishop today to go to the Soviet Union and help conquer “the darkness of atheism.”

The Pope told members of Argentina’s 200,000-strong Ukrainian community the Roman Catholic church “shares your suffering . . . and your ecumenical vocation marked by the stigma of pain.”

But while calling for the union of the Roman and Ukrainian branches of the church, John Paul did not comment on a possible visit to the Ukraine.

Police and soldiers guarded the Ukrainian Cathedral in the capital as Monsignor Andres Sapelak asked the Pope to go to the Ukraine in 1988--the 1,000th anniversary of the Christianization of Russia--”to initiate and bless the second millennium together with Ukrainians in their own land.”

“We are sure, most holy father, that Ukrainian Christianity will shine again in the Slavic East, sweeping away the darkness of atheism,” he said.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin forcibly merged the Ukrainian Catholic Church with the state-tolerated Russian Orthodox Church and, officially, the Soviet government no longer recognizes the existence of the Ukrainian faith.