KIEV, Ukraine - The head of Ukraine's Greek-Catholic Church on Friday rejected criticism that Pope John Paul's visit to the former Soviet country this month would heighten tensions between its Christian denominations.
"Many years' experience have shown his presence has had only a positive effect on the countries he has visited and I don't recall a single instance where relations worsened," Cardinal Lubomyr Husar told a news conference.
The Pope begins a five-day visit to the capital Kiev and the historic city of Lviv in western Ukraine on June 23. More than two million people are expected to flock to see him and attend huge open-air masses.
The trip, the first by a pontiff to the largely Orthodox country, has sparked protest marches by hundreds of Orthodox priests, nuns and worshippers.
Ukraine's main Orthodox Church, which is linked to Russia's Orthodox Church, accuses Rome of seeking converts.
The Vatican says Pope John Paul's trip is a pastoral visit for the country's six million Catholics.
Husar, whose leads the largest Catholic church in Ukraine, said the Pope would use to visit to urge the country's Christians to improve their relations.
"The Pope will touch on the theme of unity amongst Christians because we are all witnesses to how much hurt these divisions have brought to our nation," he said.
John Paul was the first pontiff to go to an Orthodox country when he visited Romania in 1999.
He has said he wants to see Christianity's eastern and western Churches, which split in 1054, unite. But the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexiy II, has repeatedly declined to meet the Pope, preventing a papal visit to Russia.