The World - News from Feb. 6, 1989

Roman Catholic Mass was celebrated in Vilnius Cathedral for the first time since the Communist authorities of Soviet Lithuania seized the building 40 years ago and turned it into a warehouse. The 17th-Century cathedral in the Lithuanian capital was packed as Bishop Julijonas Steponavicius prostrated himself in front of the pillared altar in a reconsecration ceremony. The cathedral was seized in 1949 as part of a campaign by Communist authorities against organized religions in the three Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940. The authorities agreed last October to return the cathedral amid signs of a warming in relations between church and state.