Word: lasting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
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...
...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...
...surging crowds that toppled Czechoslovakia's rulers last week were inspired by, among others, Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek, 90, who has become an increasingly militant proponent of change. The ousted Jakes regime, which had permitted the appointment of six new Catholic bishops, only two weeks ago concluded a round of talks at the Vatican. In East Germany, the bloc's only predominantly Protestant state, this year's pro-democracy movement emerged from small church gatherings that, through the 1980s, criticized the Communists' handling of foreign policy, disarmament and the environment. A bishops' statement read from every pulpit Sept. 10 detailed "long...
Decades later, ten bishops and an unknown number of priests are still functioning. "They deny us the right to praise our God openly," says Catholicism's Metropolitan Vladimir, 83, who faithfully celebrates clandestine Masses daily on a makeshift altar in his tiny Lvov apartment. Last September more than 100,000 demonstrators wound their way through Lvov to the St. Yuri Cathedral, one of the former Catholic churches currently operated by the Orthodox. Subsequently, Ukrainians in Lvov and elsewhere have retaken control of some Orthodox church buildings...