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The big breakthrough came when the Pope boldly dispatched Casaroli, by now Vatican Secretary of State, and seven other Cardinals to Moscow last year to celebrate the Christian millennium. Casaroli managed a 90-minute meeting with Gorbachev and handed him a three-page letter plus a memo from John Paul listing complaints about treatment of Catholics. Gorbachev responded directly to several of the Pope's requests. Last year Lithuania's two leading bishops were returned to head dioceses after a combined 53 years of internal exile, and the cathedral in Vilnius, previously used as an art museum, was restored for worship. This year the Belorussian republic got its first bishop in 63 years. That paved the way for Archbishop Angelo Sodano, who oversees the Vatican's foreign relations, to make the arrangements for Gorbachev's historic visit to the Holy See.
These concessions to Catholicism are only part of Gorbachev's religious liberalization. Television is broadcasting worship services, and religious art is openly displayed. Last month the Orthodox Eucharist was celebrated in the 15th century Assumption Cathedral, inside the Kremlin, for the first time since 1918.
Most important, 3,000 new churches have opened in the past nine months. However, Russian Orthodoxy's current 10,000 churches are a far cry from the 18,000 that existed when Stalin died, and just a fraction of the 54,000 before the Bolshevik Revolution. Ever since World War II, when Stalin fostered a , revival of Orthodoxy in order to enlist its support in the war effort, the Kremlin's policy has been not to liquidate the church but to infiltrate and control it. For that reason, the Soviet regime has always preferred docile Russian-led Orthodox and Protestant churches to Catholicism, which is more independent and led by a feisty Pope in Rome.
But the battle for religious freedom is not yet won. The Supreme Soviet has still not taken up a long-anticipated revision of the repressive religious statute instituted by Stalin in 1929. There is no certainty whether, or when, parliament will scrap the hated law, which subjects all church activities to Communist control and forbids parish education. Nor, given the history of the U.S.S.R., is there certainty that rights proclaimed in speeches and laws will be honored by bureaucrats.
Many of the gains made by the Soviet Union's 70 million Christians have also been enjoyed by the estimated 74 million Christians who live in the six satellite nations. Poland's Communists "have realized that unleashing conflict with the church has been a mistake throughout the past 45 years," says Alojzy Orszulik, the Polish bishops' spokesman. The nation, which remains 95% Catholic, this year became the first in the Soviet bloc to enact a law restoring all basic rights to the churches. Diplomatic relations with the Holy See were established in July. Hungary, also rapidly liberalizing, is 60% Catholic and has sizable Lutheran and Reformed churches. The regime is rewriting the religious-control laws, has abolished the repressive state Office for Church Affairs and, after talks last week at the Vatican, has indicated that diplomatic relations will be re-established. The Pope is due to visit Hungary in 1991.