MOSCOW - The Roman Catholic Church will ask the Russian Cabinet for an explanation of why a bishop was barred from entering Russia, the second case this month to stoke fears of persecution of Catholics, a church official said Monday.
"Many Catholic believers have the impression that a large-scale anti-Catholic campaign ... regrettably involving representatives of state structures ... has begun in Russia," Rev. Igor Kowalewsky, a spokesman for the Catholic Church in Russia, said at a news conference.
Bishop Jerzy Mazur, en route to his Siberian diocese from his native Poland, was barred from entering Russia when he arrived at a Moscow airport on Friday. He was told he was on the list of foreigners barred from entering Russia and was sent back to Warsaw.
Two weeks ago, Russian officers ripped Rev. Stefano Caprio's visa out of his passport as he left, meaning he could not return to his parish in the western city of Vladimir unless he receives a new visa.
"Catholic priests working in Russia better not leave the country, or else they risk not seeing their flocks again," the daily newspaper Vremya Novostei said Monday.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman on Monday refused to comment on Mazur's case, and other Russian officials have given no explanation for either incident, which came amid heightened tensions between Catholics and the dominant Russian Orthodox Church, which accuses the Catholic Church of trying to lure away its adherents.
Mazur headed one of the four dioceses that the Roman Catholic Church created in Russia in February by upgrading its lower-level apostolic administrations — an action that vexed the Russian Orthodox Church. The Vatican insisted that setting up dioceses was just a "normalization" of its structure in Russia, but the Orthodox Church called them an encroachment.
Kowalewsky said he hoped that the Orthodox Church leadership played no role in the Mazur and Caprio cases and held out hope that inter-church relations would improve. But he noted other conflicts, including a recent decision by local authorities to halt the construction of a Catholic church in Pskov following complaints by an Orthodox bishop.
Kowalewsky also said that Orthodox believers on Sunday picketed the Catholic Church in Irkutsk, center of Mazur's diocese, shouting anti-Catholic slogans and holding insulting placards. Russian law bans such rallies around churches, and the Catholic Church has asked prosecutors to investigate the Irkutsk incident and a similar one in Pskov last month.
Russian Orthodox Church spokesman Father Vsevolod Chaplin on Monday denied that it had anything to do with Mazur's case, but added that the Catholics "should respect the laws of the Russian state," according to the Interfax news agency.
Chaplin mentioned Catholic Church documents which referred to Russia's disputed Kuril Islands by their Japanese name. The islands, seized by the Soviet army in the closing days of World War II and claimed back by Japan, are part of Mazur's diocese.
"Any country would evaluate strictly the activities of a foreign clergyman who doesn't respect its territorial integrity," Chaplin said, according to Interfax.
Russia's Foreign Ministry has previously criticized Mazur for using a Japanese name for Russian territory. Kowalewsky said Monday that the Catholic Church had agreed to abandon the name.
Russian human rights ombudsman Oleg Mironov expressed concern about Mazur's case, saying that "there should be no pressure in anything related to religion," Interfax reported.
About two-thirds of Russia's 144 million people are Orthodox. There are approximately 600,000 Catholics, including 50,000 living in Mazur's diocese — an area larger than the United States.