Pope, Gorbachev to Hold Talks at Vatican on Dec. 1

Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will meet at the Vatican on Dec. 1 for talks that could lead the Kremlin to legalize the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church and invite the Pope to Moscow.

The meeting, announced by the Vatican in a brief statement Friday, will be the first between a Kremlin leader and a pontiff.

Vatican sources said the meeting, which will immediately precede Gorbachev’s two-day shipboard summit with President Bush off Malta, is expected to last about two hours.

In a separate statement, issued with the forthcoming meeting clearly in mind, the Vatican called on Moscow to recognize the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which dictator Josef Stalin forcibly merged with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1946.

Its estimated 5 million faithful have since been forced to worship underground.

“Whatever may have been the difficulties and tensions of the past, a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation must reign which will allow Christians to bear witness together to their faith and its requirements,” the Vatican statement added.

Leaders in exile of the Ukrainian church said in September that the Vatican has made a papal meeting with Gorbachev conditional on Soviet willingness to discuss legalization of the denomination.

They say John Paul would like to visit the Soviet Union in 1992 if the church is legalized.

The Polish-born Pope has often said he would like to visit the Soviet Union if he is allowed to visit Catholic areas such as the Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia.