CATHOLICISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T01017R000403480001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 9
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 5, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

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Memorandum for:
The attached paper on Catholicism in
Eastern Europe was requested by the
NI0/Europe. It was prepared by various
analysts in the East European Division.
EURA/EE
Attachment: EURM86-20024
E U R A
Office of European Analysis
Directorate of Intelligence
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Catholicism in Eastern Europe
Except in Albania where all religious practice has been
eliminated the Roman Catholic Church has survived the
establishment of Marxist societies in Eastern Europe. In
recent years, and particularly since the appointment of a
Polish Pope, there have even been signs of a revival of
Catholicism in the region. While no country seems close to
developing the same level of religious intensity that exists
in Poland -- where crucifixes hang in some state schools --
East European and Soviet authorities are worried about the
attraction of religion, particularly among the youth
While the Vatican is pleased with this trend it
recognizes that much more needs to be done to secure genuine
religious rights in Eastern Europe. There is a shortage of
priests and churchs and most of the regimes insist on
participating in the selection of new clerics. The Pope has
been pressing hard to correct these inequities and would
like to visit several East European countries in addition to
another planned trip to Poland in 1987
Catholicism and the East European Marxist states are
likely to maintain an uneasy coexistence. The governments
need stable societies in order to prosper, and the Church
needs state support to function; neither wants to create
conditions that would prompt Soviet intervention. Whatever
the outcome, the practice of religion has demonstrated the
limitations of state power in Eastern Europe for over 40
years and the yearnings of the people for a spiritual life
to fill the vacuum created by Marxist atheism.
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The Pope continues to keep well-informed on events in
Poland through a constant stream of visits by both clerics
and lay people to Rome. Nevertheless, it seems clear that
he recognizes Cardinal Glemp as the man who has to fight the
battles with the Polish authorities and leaves most of thehe
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the Pope
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with the Jaruze s i regime, but is unwilling to extend
diplomatic relations until the regime goes ahead with
legislation giving the Church a legal status in the country.
In the meantime, he has strongly
supported the Church's efforts to expand its activities into
various social-cultural activities to substitute for
discredited state institutions. The Pope endorsed the
Church's effort to create an internationally financed fund
to aid private agriculture and, on balance, believes that US
sanctions have lost much of their efficiency.
The Polish authorities have reportedly already given
their approval for the visit
The Pope would clearly like to visit Gdansk
and other reported Solidarity strongholds, but the
authorities are adamantly opposed, fearing that a visit
would stir up the workers.
the Pope
is prepared to receive Jaruzelski in Rome in the
near future. In recent weeks Jaruzelski has been angling
for an invitation to Rome to further increase his
international legitimacy. The stumbling block apparently is
the willingness of Italian Prime Minister Craxi to receive
him. The prospects for such a visit remain unclear since
the Italians stipulated that three prominent political
prisoners be released and the Polish regime responded by
only reducing marginally the sentences of two.
The Czechoslovak regime's tight controls over the
activities of the Catholic Church are a matter of continuing
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concern to the Vatican and have contributed to very
contentious relations between Rome and Prague. The
government's restrictive policy reflects its concern that
the Church could become a haven for anti-regime activity
similar to neighboring Poland. Government control of the
Catholic Church includes state licensing and payment of
priests and required state approval of ordinations.
The Czechoslovak Catholic Church, which claims 11
million followers out of a population of 15 million, has
experienced a revival of popular support in recent years.
The most recent manifestation of this sentiment occurred at'
the town of Velehrad in July 1985 when over 100,000 attended
the 1100th anniversary of the burial nearby of St.
Methodius, who is credited with bringing Christianity to the
Slavs. The generally young crowd that attended loudly
objected to attempts by government representatives to focus
the celebration on secular terms. Vatican State Secretary
for Foreign Affairs Cardinal Casaroli was received
enthusiastically and expressed the desire that the Pope
would be able to visit Czechoslovakia.
Ten of the 13 Czechoslovak bishoprics and two
archbishoprics are currently vacant. The Vatican refuses to
accept candidates from among the approximately 500 priests
in the pro-government "Pacem in Terris" organization, and
the government will not consider candidates from among the
remaining 2600 priests in Czechoslovakia. Cardinal
Casaroli's consultations with government leaders lastisummer
after the Velehrad celebrations produced no solutions
The Vatican's greatest concern for the future of the
Czechoslovak church is finding a successor for Cardinal
Tomasek who is 86 and ailing. Tomasek has been a fairly
cautious leader of the Catholic Church although even his
limited outspokeness has led the government to isolate and
criticize him. Government nominees to succeed Tomasek --
would be
pro-government "Pacem in Terris" supporters that would
present the Vatican with the same problem it has experienced
with the Czechoslovak bishoprics.
The Vatican's relations with Hungary are comparatively
good. Religious practice is not rigorously interfered with
and the Catholic Church has its own newspaper, although it
is subject to the same sort of ill-defined censorship as all
Hungarian publications. The Hungarian Catholic Church
claims 6 million adherents out of a total population of 10.7
million.
At times the Vatican appears uneasy with the relatively
cozy church-state relationship in Hungary.
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Some of the Hungarian faithful agree and a minority have
formed the so-called Base Communities of Catholics, who
object to following both the dictates of the Church
hierarchy and some of the regime's policies. In particular,
the Communities' advocacy of conscientious objection to
military service has strained the church-state relationship.
The regime has tried to defuse the situation by quietly
allowing Catholic conscientious objectors to perform
alternate civilian service, and the Vatican, which does not
want a confrontation that might undermine the progress made
by the Hungarian Church, has en'oined the dissidents to obey
their ecclesiastical superiors
The Pope received East German leader Honecker during the
latter's official visit to Italy in April 1985, but the
visit has not led to improvements in church-state relations.
According to US Embassy sources, the Pope has been urging
Cardinal Meisner to modify the German Church's traditional
policy of keeping the government at arm's length and rather
to adopt, at least in some degree the Protestant Church's
policy of political engagement. There is little evidence
that Meisner has moved in this direction. The Catholic
Church in East Germany is a small minority -- 1.5 million in
a population of almost 17 million.
The rise in recent years of public concern in East
Germany over "peace" issues has strained traditional
Catholic detachment. In January 1983, after journalistic
criticism of their stance from abroad and reportedly after
Papal urging, the East German bishops issued a pastoral
letter on world peace that challenged several regime
positions. Days later, Pope John Paul II announced that the
leading East German bishop, Meisner, would be made a
cardinal. The pastoral letter was not followed, however, by
any noticeable chan a in relations between the church and
the regime, and, the
traditional arm's-length posture s
the East German Catholic hierarchy
The position of the Roman Catholic Church in Romania is
surprisingly good, in view of the Ceausescu regime's
extremely restrictive policy toward religion in general, its
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brutally repressive approach toward fundamentalist
Prostestant believers, and the close identification of the
Catholic Church with the country's beleaguered Hungarian and
German minorities. The Vatican desk officer for Romania
told U.S. diplomats last year that in many ways the
Catholic Church encountered less pressure from the Ceausescu
regime than it did elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
The Vatican nevertheless has a number of concerns.
Chief among them is the plight of the Uniate, or Greek
Catholic Church (which practices the Eastern rite but
communes with Rome), officially suppressed and annexed to
the Orthodox Church in 1948. The Uniate Church, centered in
Transylvania, had about 1.6 million adherents (almost
entirely ethnic Romanian) and was the second most
influential Church in the country prior to its dissolution.
It continues to function underground with a network of
secretly ordained priests and claims some 500,000 to 700,000
adherents. The Pope celebrated a mass for one of the Uniate
Church's underground bishops upon learning of his death last
year, thereby conveying his continuing interest in the fate
of the Uniates.
Other major Vatican concerns are the regime's refusal
since 1949 to recognize four of the Catholic Church's six
dioceses and the lack of an official statute regularizing
the Catholic Church's status. Negotiations for a statute
have been going on between Bucharest and the Vatican for
several years. Agreement seemed near in 1978, but the
regime has been dragging its feet since then, possibly in
reaction to the election of Pope John Paul II and his
association with the rise of Solidarity in Poland
A final issue of concern is the regime's discrimination
against the country's sizable (nearly two million) Hungarian
minority, the majority of whom are Roman Catholic. These
concerns reached a high point in 1984 because of the alleged
beating death of an ethnic Hungarian Roman Catholic priest
at the hands of the security authorities. The issue has
never been resolved conclusively, and Vatican sources appear
split on whether the regime was at fault.
Yugoslavia is the only East European country that has
diplomatic relations with the Vatican, and the Pope as
recently as last December expressed an interest in paying it
a visit. But bilateral relations remain cool, and the
prospects for an improvement, or a papal visit, look dim for
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The main sticking point to better Belgrade-Vatican ties,
and a papal visit, is deep-seated friction between church
and state in Croatia, one of Yugoslavia's six constituent
republics. As in Poland, the Communist Croatian authorities
fear the Croatian Church for its longstanding role as a
defender of Croat nationhood. They attack it for its
collaboration during World War II with the fascist regime
installed by the Nazis. Croatia's ideologically alienated
youth nonetheless flock to church events in record numbers.
Church-state relations are much better in the less
doctrinaire liberal northerly Republic of Slovenia.
Catholics make up nearly one-third of the country's 23
million eo le the others being mainly Orthodox or Muslim.
Pope John Paul is worried about the survival of the
Church in Bulgaria where less than one percent of the
population is Roman Catholic. The training of new priests
is a major problem for the Church, since there is no
seminary in Bulgaria. Although the government claims that
it would allow some priests to go to Rome to study, the
number of new vocations is low and most priests are elderly.
Sofia and the Vatican have not been able to agree on the
appointment of a new bishop to Plovdiv. The Bulgarian
government rejected the Vatican's nomination in 1984
In recent years -- especially since the charges of
Bulgarian complicity in the assassination attempt -- the
Bulgarian government has actively sought to project a facade
of better relations with the Vatican. Before the Antonov
trial began last May, the regime sent a delegation to Rome
in connection with the anniversary of Saints Cyril and
Methodius.
Before World War II, ten percent of the Albanian
population was Roman Catholic, with roots back to the first
missionary campaigns of the Apostles. Hundreds of clergymen
were jailed, expelled, or executed in the first decade after
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the war. The Catholic Church seemed to suffer the most,
apparently because of*its foreign links, and was forced to
break with the Vatican. In 1967 organized religion was
outlawed altogether and Albania proclaimed the establishment
of "the world's first atheistic state."
The Pope on a number of occasions during the past few
years has publicly criticized Albanian religious
persecution. In return, Tirane censors all references to
the Pope from Italian TV programs, which are rebroadcast
otherwise untouched to the domestic audience. Prospects for
improved conditions for the country's Catholic minority are
slim under the regime of Ramiz Alia that came to power
almost a year ago.
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SUBJECT: Catholicism in Eastern Europe
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