Vatican, Soviets Confer on Summit
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican said Friday it had begun talks with Soviet diplomats on a possible meeting between Pope John Paul II and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
It was the Vatican’s first official acknowledgement that the Pope and the Soviet leader are likely to hold a historic meeting during Gorbachev’s visit to Italy in November.
Bishop Angelo Sodano, the Holy See’s foreign minister, met Soviet Ambassador Nikolai Lunkov in Rome this month, “in view of a possible visit by President Gorbachev to the Vatican,” said the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Joaquin Navarro.
The visit, following an exchange of letters between Gorbachev and the Pope, would be the first between a Kremlin leader and a pontiff and would also be the first step toward an eventual papal trip to the Soviet Union.
Their main topic is expected to be the status of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, suppressed by dictator Josef Stalin and forcibly merged into the Russian Orthodox Church.
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