The World - News from April 20, 1988
Pope John Paul II, in a statesmanlike message meant to be read in the Kremlin, urged religious freedom for an underground church in the Soviet Ukraine on the 1,000th anniversary of its founding. The papal letter to the officially nonexistent Ukrainian Catholic Church was intended to express solidarity with the estimated 4 million secret Roman Catholics in the Ukraine without angering Soviet leaders. The Ukrainian Catholic Church, which was outlawed by Josef Stalin in 1946 and forcibly absorbed into the Russian Orthodox Church, is an Eastern Rite faith whose members are in full communion with Rome.
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