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Vatican rebukes Orthodox Church for killing accord

The Vatican issued an unusually strong rebuke of Georgia and its dominant Orthodox Church on Saturday after the government, prodded by street protests and the Orthodox leader, scrapped an accord guaranteeing religious freedoms for minority Catholics.

The Vatican foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, had traveled to the capital Tbilisi on Thursday specifically to sign the agreement, which would have obliged Georgia to guarantee Catholics the freedom to perform Catholic rites, open Catholic schools and study Catholic history.

But Tauran went away empty handed following street protests Friday by thousands of the Orthodox Christian faithful, including at least one high-ranking church leader, that stopped traffic in the capital and prompted the government to cancel the signing.

Protesters and some Orthodox leaders said the agreement would have allowed the Catholic Church, which has about 50,000 adherents in this overwhelmingly Orthodox country of 4.4 million, to increase its influence to the detriment of the Orthodox.

Similar complaints have been voiced by the Orthodox Church in Russia, which accuses the Vatican of stealing its flock and has blocked the pope from visiting the country.

A Vatican official termed the incident with Georgia "serious," although not something that would break relations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, similarly said it wouldn't have a major impact on the Vatican's efforts to improve relations with other Orthodox churches -- a priority of Pope John Paul II's 25-year pontificate.

But it certainly was a step back for Vatican relations with the former Soviet republic, which John Paul visited in 1999 calling for new "bridges" with the Orthodox church. But even on that trip, John Paul was met with resistance by some Orthodox suspicious of his intentions.

Tauran issued an unusually critical statement upon his departure from Tbilisi, saying he regretted that the aim of his trip had been thwarted by a "last-minute rethinking by Georgian authorities."

"The Holy See hopes that Georgia, a member of important international conventions on human rights, knows how to remedy this regrettable situation," Tauran said in the statement, which was also released in Rome.

Tauran said the Holy See also felt "gravely wounded" by the attitude of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

The leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Catholicos-Patriarch Ilya II, had said before Tauran's visit that the church opposed signing the agreement at this time.

Bishop Zenon of Dmanisi, a high-ranking official in the Georgian church, attended Friday's rally and said the church supported it. He told the protesters that the agreement would have enabled the Vatican to increase its influence in Georgia.

Tauran said the incident had caused "great suffering" on the part of John Paul, and said the ones who would suffer the most were Georgia's Roman Catholics, "who remain without any legal guarantees."
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