c. 1999 Religion News Service

TBILISI, Georgia _ When John Paul II makes a first-ever papal visit here to one of the world’s oldest Christian nations, he will be met by Orthodox leaders keen on avoiding the impression of interreligious dialogue.”We don’t look at his visit as some kind of ecumenical event,”said Archbishop Abraham, head of foreign affairs for the Georgian Orthodox Patriarchate, in a recent interview. He added while some Georgian Orthodox hierarchs opposed the papal visit, they are standing by Patriarch Ilia II’s decision last spring to invite the pontiff.

Despite talk in the Georgian press that the pope and patriarch would take part in joint prayers during the Nov. 8 and 9 visit, the archbishop said it was out of the question.”The Georgian Orthodox Church has always looked negatively at any kind of worship service with non-Orthodox,”said Archbishop Abraham. He explained that joint worship was highly problematic given what he called the accretion of objectionable Catholic dogma after the Great Schism of 1054 between Eastern and Western Christianity.

In somewhat forced attempts to downplay the religious significance of the pontiff’s visit, Georgian church officials have taken pains to portray the pope as a head of state and a political leader rather than a religious figure. All the same, some Orthodox clerics have loudly voiced their opposition.

Perhaps the most prominent is Father Basili (cq) Mkalashvili, a defrocked Orthodox priest who, along with at least 10 other monks from five monasteries, split with the Georgian Orthodox Church over the issue of ecumenism. Reacting to the threat of schism, Ilia II withdrew his church from the World Council of Churches in 1997.

Mkalashvili calls the visit of Pope John Paul II the first stage of a Catholic invasion into the region and strongly criticized the Georgian prelate for inviting the pope, saying that Orthodox”don’t have the right to host the pope. It is against God’s law.” Over the last month, mainstream Orthodox priests have held protest prayer services in the large public square where the pope had been set to celebrate an outdoor Mass for an expected 5,000-10,000 people. Then, last week, local Catholic officials announced they would move the Mass into Tbilisi’s indoor Palace of Sports.”We are showing respect toward the Orthodox people, whose tradition is against holding liturgies outside,”said Monsignor Ambrose Madtha, the counselor at Tbilisi’s Apostolic Nunciature.

Archbishop Abraham explained his church’s objections.”When we have Orthodox patriarchs come and there is no room, we still have the service in a church and there must be close to 1 million Orthodox in Tbilisi. How many Catholics are there?” That is a question even Catholic leaders in Georgia have trouble answering. Madtha put the number at 100,000 Latin-rite, Armenian-rite and Chaldean-rite Catholics in Georgia. Monsignor Giuseppe Pasotto, the Tbilisi-based, Latin-rite Apostolic Administrator for Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, estimated the 32 parishes in Georgia serve some 50,000 Catholics. Meanwhile, Zurab Tskhovrebadze, a spokesman for the Georgian Orthodox Church, said there were no more than 2,000 or 3,000 practicing Catholics in the country.

Statistics for the Georgian Orthodox Church itself are hard to come by because it is still emerging from decades of communist rule and two centuries of domination by the Russian Orthodox Church. It is safe to say, however, that the majority of Georgia’s 5.1 million citizens are at least nominally Orthodox.

As it broke free from the control of the Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodoxy’s Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul reaffirmed in 1990 the Georgian Orthodox Church’s historic place as one of 13 autocephalous Orthodox churches, the highest level of self-governing in the Orthodox world.

Along with neighboring Armenia, Georgia boasts one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. Largely thanks to the fourth-century missionary work of St. Nino, Georgians gradually abandoned fire worship and embraced Christianity. Over the centuries, poised on the edge of the Muslim world, Christianity became an integral part of Georgians’ identity. Tradition holds that their very name in the English language comes from an intense adoration of St. George.

While in Georgia, John Paul will visit Georgian President Eduard Shevarnadze, the onetime Soviet foreign minister who was baptized into the Georgian Orthodox Church in 1992. The pontiff will also meet _ but not pray with _ Ilia II. A local Catholic official who frequently meets with the Georgian hierarchy complained,”They won’t even say with us the Our Father, the prayer Jesus taught.” The pope will stay his one night in Tbilisi as the first guest of a homeless shelter recently constructed by Caritas, the international Catholic relief organization.

Georgia is one of the poorest of the former Soviet republics with about 80 percent of the population below the poverty level and an estimated 300,000 internal refugees from two separatist wars. Caritas has emerged as a key player in providing humanitarian aid and, lately, development assistance.

Aside from the shelter, Tbilisi’s first, Caritas is also constructing a commercial bakery that will provide 50 jobs and bread for three Caritas soup kitchens that together feed 700 people daily in Tbilisi. A visit to one of those soup kitchens on a recent weekday found a mixture of children from poor families and pensioners waiting for a sit-down, two-course meal.

DEA END RNS