Yeltsin Wins Financial and Moral Support in Rome : Italy: The Russian leader is promised food credits and a Fiat deal. The Pope pledges Catholic support for his troubled nation.

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin wound up a successful image-polishing visit to Italy on Friday, strengthened by promises of investment from Italian businessmen and of moral support from Pope John Paul II.

On his way out of town for a meeting today in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, at which he will seek to expand his fledgling Commonwealth of Independent States as successor to the moribund Soviet Union, Yeltsin wrote an epitaph for Soviet President Michael S. Gorbachev.

Asked at a news conference if the Pope had inquired about Gorbachev during a 65-minute meeting with Yeltsin, the Russian’s face clouded over.

“Yes,” he said. After a long pause, Yeltsin added: “I told His Holiness that since 1917 we have never had” a leader who left power with dignity and without being vilified afterward. “Gorbachev will get all the honors,” he added. “Tomorrow we will talk about what we can do to honor him.” The Pope liked the human touch, Yeltsin said.

On his first visit abroad as a top leader in the emerging commonwealth, Yeltsin walked in Gorbachev’s shadow. Yeltsin’s reception, although officially warm, was also cautious. Crowds were small. Italy loves Gorbachev. It hardly knows Yeltsin.

And Yeltsin’s shy wife, Naya, did not match the panache of Raisa Gorbachev. Raisa bought Italian designer clothes with a gold credit card and went to see the Pope in an outfit of daring cardinal red. Italians loved it. Naya Yeltsin went to a department store to buy clothes for her grandchildren and donned a dowdy white suit to call on John Paul. “Raisa’s Heir Dresses at the Supermarket and Snubs Stylists,” one catty headline said.

Yeltsin, though, made his points. “I am very satisfied,” he said. Like old Rome, which he visited Friday, the visit “exceeded my expectations,” he said.

On Thursday, the Italian government told Yeltsin that it would immediately make available $1.3 billion in credits to allow the purchase of food and other basic goods to help Russia get through the winter. On Friday, Yeltsin wooed Italian entrepreneurs in an attempt to cement ties with Italian industry, which has long been active in joint ventures in the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin’s biggest catch Friday was an agreement with Fiat under which the Italian automotive giant will acquire a one-third stake in Russia’s largest auto maker. A protocol should be signed in Moscow in another month, Yeltsin said.

Fiat said in a statement from its headquarters in Turin: “The accord, besides defining collaboration of an industrial nature, should lead to a stake of the Fiat group, producing a vehicle that would be suitable for the Russian market and competitive for export in Western European markets.”

Like Gorbachev two years before him, Yeltsin rode across town in a shiny black Zil limousine to call on John Paul at the Vatican.

“This was a really historical meeting, an exceptional moment in my life. Moments like this don’t happen often,” Yeltsin said after their conversation through Polish-Russian interpreters in the Pope’s library.

Yeltsin told reporters the meeting was “very intense” and wide-ranging. A Vatican statement said the Pope promised “the commitment of the Catholic community to help overcome the current difficulties” in Russia.

John Paul expressed Vatican concern over control of nuclear weapons and the roiling tensions between Roman Catholic minorities and Orthodox majorities in Russia, the Vatican said.

Yeltsin promised full respect for religious freedom, telling the Pope he would work to assure that “believers and nonbelievers have equal rights.”