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THE MALTA SUMMIT : Pope Working Hard to Prepare for Gorbachev Talks--and for History

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

Meetings of the management team at the Vatican tend to be almost quaint by the standards of modern industry or diplomacy: Pope John Paul II with a few well-read aides around a polished antique table. In recent weeks, strategy sessions have lengthened, sometimes stretching through lunch and beyond. The Pope is preparing for history.

On Friday morning, with Swiss Guards at stiff salute, the president of the Soviet Union comes to the Vatican for an unprecedented encounter of two Slavs--a Russian and a Pole--who direct this century’s two most disparate and antagonistic doctrines: communism and Catholicism. Their meeting would be momentous even as a ceremonial exchange of pleasantries, for Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Karol Wojtyla are perhaps the two most charismatic leaders in the world today.

But there is much more. The reformer of the Kremlin and the Bishop of Rome have business to transact that could reach deep into the lives of millions of people already wrestling with breathtaking change in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. For starters, John Paul may make a pastoral visit to the Soviet Union.

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It was Josef Stalin who once inquired with a sneer how many divisions the Pope had. The more pertinent question at the Holy See this week is whether the Pope, celebrating new religious freedoms in the East, might help heal divisions in contentious regions within the crumbling Communist empire.

Gorbachev is hoping to enlist papal support to cool nationalist passions that complicate the tense process of change in areas of the Soviet Union where Catholicism is important: the Byelorussian Republic, the Baltic republics of Lithuania and Latvia and, critically, in the potentially explosive Ukraine, where 150,000 Catholics paraded Sunday demanding legalization of their church.

The Soviet leader arrives here today for two days of antipasto meetings with Italian government and Communist Party leaders before journeying to the Vatican on Friday morning, and then on to a weekend summit with President Bush in Malta.

The agenda of an hourlong session in the Pope’s private library is unannounced, but its outline is clear, due to leaks by both sides fleshing out long, private letters that Gorbachev and John Paul have exchanged over the past 18 months.

General topics will range from the emerging new international order, with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe, to old, solution-resistant flash points like the Middle East. Peace for tormented Lebanon has become a particular papal cause.

The history of the meeting, though, will turn on specific, to-the-bone issues on which each man seems prepared to give what the other seeks.

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The Pope will be stressing the need for full religious freedom within the Soviet Union, particularly in areas like the restive Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Catholic Church, an eastern-rite, so-called Uniate church faithful to Rome, has been officially suppressed for more than four decades.

“The Holy Father affirms as a universal principle any individual’s right in a constitutional order to profess his faith in public or private,” said papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro. “He asserts the historic needs of Catholics for a church hierarchy--the right to name bishops who have free communication with Rome--for the right to maintain seminaries to train priests and to establish and maintain churches.”

Under Gorbachev, religion is no longer an enemy of the Soviet state: The Russian Orthodox Church and Protestant denominations are enjoying unprecedented new freedom, and so are competing Catholics. In recent months, the Vatican restored the Catholic hierarchy in Lithuania and named a new bishop in the Byelorussian capital of Minsk. Change is contagious: The Holy See has renewed diplomatic ties with Poland, will soon exchange ambassadors with Hungary and has been allowed to appoint four new bishops in Czechoslovakia.

One clear sign of the new times is that the Soviet delegation for the Gorbachev visit to Italy and the Vatican includes Metropolitan Yuvenali of Kolomna, foreign affairs spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church.

Perestroika has opened an entirely new situation for religion within the Soviet Union,” Yuvenali told reporters in Rome on Monday while on his way to deliver a message to the Pope from Orthodox Patriarch Pimen of Moscow. The 50-million-member Orthodox Church and the Vatican have been doctrinally divided for centuries and, although they have been talking of late, there is no agreement about how to resolve rivalries between their followers in the Ukraine.

Gorbachev must tread lightly to avoid infuriating Orthodox leaders, but it is clear that he is ready to lift official prohibition of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. In 1946, Stalin ordered it folded into the government-obedient Orthodox faith, which acquired Catholic church buildings but usually not the allegiance of their flocks. After 43 years of clandestine worship, Vatican officials believe that there are 3 million to 5 million Uniate Catholics in the Ukraine today.

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Anatoly Adamishin, a deputy Soviet foreign minister, told correspondents who will accompany Gorbachev to Rome that pending legislation will give “equal status to all denominations. . . . At present, however, the Uniate church enjoys, de facto, the same rights as all other churches.”

In the Ukraine, tensions are high between Orthodox worshipers and Catholics, who have seized a number of churches lost in the Stalin era. Both the Vatican and the Kremlin want to avoid bloodshed as much as they want to resolve their dispute in the Ukraine. There, and in other simmering Soviet republics, religion and nascent nationalism go hand in hand.

“The involvement of some of the faithful in nationalism complicates the questions most essential to the Vatican, of freedom of religion and the right of expression,” said Father John Long, a Jesuit specialist in Soviet affairs.

The Soviet strategy, sources in Moscow told correspondent Michael Parks of The Times, is to separate nationalism from religion in both Catholic regions and in Islamic areas of Central Asia, and then to confront nationalism through decentralization in a yet-to-be-developed federal system.

“It is desirable that all who exert influence on the situation would urge the Uniates to take a more moderate course,” Adamishin said in a remark prompted by Uniate-Orthodox who-owns-what tensions in the Ukraine and meant to be heard at the Vatican.

Gorbachev also brings to the Vatican an oft-expressed conviction that religion can be an important force in muting the widespread alienation that afflicts Soviet society. And morality, after all, is a papal calling.

“Gorbachev has asked Christians to make a moral contribution to Soviet life,” Navarro said. “The concerns of the church are the same as in the West: to fight corruption, alcoholism and destruction of the family, to combat drugs and to help the old.”

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Vatican and Soviet spokesmen alike expect that closer future ties between the old antagonists will prove one of the lasting fruits of Friday’s meeting.

“We are not at the end of a process but at the beginning. It is a huge beginning--but it is only a start,” Navarro said.

THE UKRAINE’S OUTLAWED CHURCH

The meeting this Friday between Pope John Paul II and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev is expected to include the vital issue of religious freedom in the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Catholic Church has been suppressed for more than four decades. A look at the church:

Context--The Ukraine, the Soviet Union’s second-largest republic in population, is also the nation’s breadbasket, supplying about one-third of its wheat and grain, and is an important coal-producing and industrial area. As in much of rest of the Soviet Union, it has been the scene of nationalist, labor and religious unrest.

Doctrine--The Ukrainian Catholic Church is an Eastern-rite, so-called Uniate church, which means it is faithful to Rome. It has an estimated 4 million followers in the Ukraine.

History--In 1946, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin accused Ukrainian Catholics of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II. Their church buildings were taken over by the government-obedient Russian Orthodox Church, and the Uniate church was outlawed.

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Recent Events--Under Gorbachev, most religions are enjoying unprecedented new freedom. Although the Ukrainian Catholic Church remains officially banned, Soviet officials for the last two years have tolerated outdoor services. But Orthodox-Catholic tension has been building as some Ukrainian Catholics have seized churches lost during the Stalin era.

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