Kremlin Meets With Russian Catholic Archbishop

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 28 — Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz was encouraged by a meeting with the deputy head of President Vladimir Putin's domestic policy department. Invited to the Kremlin in the midst of a Catholic-Orthodox dispute and two days before Pope John Paul II's video link to Russia, Archbishop Kondrusiewicz told the news service that he felt Catholics in Russia had the “full support of the presidential administration.”

“We need to talk and keep talking, on the highest levels,” he said.

The Pope prayed via video link with Catholics gathered in Moscow's Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and elsewhere March 2 (story, next page). AP said he is intent on reaching out to Russia's 600,000 Catholics, a tiny minority in a nation of 144 million, where two-thirds of the population consider themselves Orthodox.

Orthodox leaders have been upset that the Vatican recently upgraded four apostolic administrations in Russia to the level of dioceses. But Archbishop Kondrusiewicz explained that the Church establishes such administrations only in extreme situations and that they are meant to be temporary.

Catholic-Muslim Dialogue Rejects Extremism

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 27 —Catholics and Muslims meeting at the Vatican said they would try to turn public opinion against extremism in religion.

A committee of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue met with the Permanent Committee of al-Azhar for Dialogue with the Monotheistic Religions. Al-Azhar is a mosque and university in Egypt that is considered to be the leading seat of learning on Sunni Islam.

The Vatican said participants observed how “extremism, from whatever side it may come, is to be condemned as not being in conformity with the teachings of the two religions,” according to the wire service.

“Extremists, particularly religious extremists, can sometimes be sincere in their intentions, yet they tend to see themselves as the only ones in the right and to show intolerance to those who do not agree with them, not accepting others with their differences, tending to violate the rights of others, and sometimes using or approving violence,” the Vatican said.

Former CIA Security Chief to Aid Vatican Security

CORRIERE DELLA SERA, Feb. 28 — Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of counterterrorism operations for the Central Intelligence Agency, has been named a security advisor to the Vatican, the Italian daily reported.

The Vatican press office declined to comment on the report for Agence France-Presse, the French news agency. Cannistraro, who led the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, reportedly will provide a link between the U.S. intelligence services and the Vatican as part of a post-Sept. 11 security upgrade.

Separately, the Delegation of the Commission of the European Communities issued a statement saying all Italian cities of art are at risk of terrorist attacks and are under surveillance.

Italy is the European country with the highest concentration of masterpieces in the world, the delegation said.

But the Vatican is an even more important “target to defend,” the statement added, saying, “Extraordinary measures have been adopted.”

“Besides John Paul II, a few other prelates now have armed guards,” the delegation said.

In addition, visitors must undergo security checks, plainclothes detectives roam the crowds and the air force conducts constant surveillance from the sky.