WORLD : Historic Meeting Between Pope and Gorbachev Set For Dec. 1
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VATICAN CITY — Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev will hold a historic meeting at the Vatican early next month that could lead the Kremlin to legalize the banned Ukrainian Catholic Church and invite the Pope to Moscow.
The Dec. 1 encounter, announced by the Vatican in a brief statement today, 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.
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