Belarus, Card. Parolin’s visit sparks hopes of a papal trip
Moscow (AsiaNews) - A three-day visit by the Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin to Minsk, began last night, March 12, the first by such a high level Holy See representative in seven years. The last secretary of state to visit Belarus was Card. Tarcisio Bertone.
The ex-Soviet state is subject to economic sanctions by the EU, launched after the presidential elections of 2010 - which confirmed Aleksandr Lukashenko - and the arrest of several opponents in the following weeks. Since then, the strong man of Minsk has been banished to strict international isolation.
Among Parolin's various appointments, is also a meeting with Lukhashenko, for years considered by the US and EU, "the last dictator of Europe", but who has undergone something of a renaissance in the background of the political crisis in Ukraine, in which Minsk has managed to establish itself as a mediation center, hosting rounds of negotiations between the EU, Russia and Ukraine. It is not excluded that the war in the former Soviet republic may be the subject on the agenda at Parolin's political meetings, which will also include Foreign Minister Vladimir Makeev.
Speaking to the Ria
Novosti newsagency the Metropolitan Archbishop of Minsk and Mogilev, Msgr. Tadeusz
Kondrusiewicz, reported that the bishops will deliver an official invitation
for the Pope to visit Belarus to the Secretary of State. "We
will listen to what the representative of the Holy Father says, and he in turn
will be aware of what is the real situation of the Catholic Church, its
problems and prospects".
The
Catholic community hopes for a papal visit. After the restoration of the
structures of the Church in Belarus, in the late 1980s, invitations to travel
to Minsk were sent both to John Paul II to Benedict XVI, but a visit never materialized.
.png)
24/11/2020 10:55
