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Putin and Pope discuss church relations

Russian President Vladimir Putin met Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday for the first time in the Vatican amid signs of warmer ties between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. They discussed the often strained relations between the two divided churches in a private meeting.

The two men met for 25 minutes in the pontiff's study in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, speaking in German for most of the session, but occasionally assisted by translators.

"A warm welcome to the Vatican," the pope told the Russian leader in German.

Putin presented the pope with a Russian icon -- typically small wood paintings.

A Vatican statement said the meeting was cordial positive.

Putin, who met the pope at the start of a 24-hour visit to Italy, knows that the 79-year-old pope would like to visit Russia. But such a visit would need the blessing of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II.

Significantly, Putin passed on greetings from Alexiy, Russian news agencies quoted presidential spokesman Alexei Gromov as saying.

Pope John Paul, who died in 2005, had standing invitations from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, but was unable to make the trip because of difficult relations with the Orthodox Church.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church has accused Catholics of using new freedoms to poach some of its faithful. The Vatican denies the charge.

Putin, who despite his background in the Soviet secret services regularly attends Orthodox services in Russia, met the pope's predecessor, John Paul II, in 2000 and 2003.

Relations between the late John Paul II, a Pole, and the Russian Orthodox Church were tense because he was a strident anti-communist and the Russian Church had been for the most part compliant with successive Soviet regimes.

Sergei Prikhodko, Putin's chief foreign policy adviser, told reporters ahead of the meeting: "The president favors improving relations between the two Churches."

But he ruled out Putin negotiating a meeting between the pope and Alexiy.

"There are no middlemen in the dialogue between Churches," Prikhodko said.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the most powerful of the world's Orthodox Churches, which split from Western Christianity in the Great Schism of 1054.

"The most important question for us is whether there are any improvements in inter-Church relations," a top Orthodox cleric, Metropolitan Illarion, told the RIA-Novosti news agency.

He described the 54-year-old Kremlin leader as a "true believer who pays much attention to the [Orthodox] Church and who always listens to the Patriarch's opinion."

Putin began his 24-hour visit to Italy by meeting President Giorgio Napolitano, who, like the Russian leader, is a former communist. He later dined with Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

Ministers and business leaders from the two countries are expected to seal accords on energy, banking and industrial cooperation.
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