MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia defended on Tuesday its decision to refuse entry to a Catholic bishop and denied it was persecuting its tiny Catholic minority, even as a Catholic monk made a new complaint of police harassment.
In a move which further soured relations between the Holy See and Russia's dominant Orthodox Church, Polish bishop Jerzy Mazur was declared persona non grata on Friday as he arrived in Moscow bound for his diocese in Irkutsk, eastern Siberia.
Polish national Mazur, who was put on a plane back to Warsaw, has worked in Irkutsk since 1998.
The Polish government, run by secular ex-communists, summoned Moscow's ambassador to the Foreign Ministry on Monday to demand an explanation, but stopped short of a public rebuke.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko accused the media of misreporting the row as a clash between Russia and Poland, and criticized talk that Polish-Catholics were being "persecuted."
"We must stress that the actions taken in connection with Jerzy Mazur have no relation whatsoever with his nationality," he said, adding that Mazur had been dealt with in strict accordance with Russian law.
"The basis for the relevant decision are the serious complaints about the activities of the Vatican's senior representative," Yakovenko said. He did not elaborate.
Orthodox Church spokesman Father Antony Ilin denied any role in the Mazur affair: "The Russian Orthodox Church is not the secret service, which can allow people into Russia or expel them from the country."
The church "does not use such methods in its disputes with other religions," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
ORTHODOX FURY
Tensions were given a further edge on Tuesday when Polish Catholic monk Damian Stepien said police had defaced his passport during a spot check in the Russian capital.
"When the policemen saw that I was here at the invitation of the Catholic Church, they asked whether I was Catholic. When I said 'yes', they angrily screwed up my papers and threw them in the bin," Stepien told Poland's PAP news agency.
"One of them punched a hole in my photo with his pen, so I can't use the passport any more," he added.
On April 12, an Italian priest who had served near Moscow for 12 years had his visa withdrawn. The spate of incidents have fueled suspicions in Catholic circles that the authorities are backing the Orthodox Church in its dispute with the Vatican.
Relations, anything but brotherly, have reached new lows over Orthodox Church accusations that Catholics are poaching its faithful.
Those fears were fanned by the Vatican's decision in February -- against Russian Foreign Ministry advice -- to create four full-blown dioceses to serve Russia's 600,000 Catholics, many descended from Poles deported to Siberia in World War Two.
An infuriated Patriarch Alexiy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is blocking a visit to Russia by Polish-born Pope John Paul, even though President Vladimir Putin favors it.
The Pope, 81 and in failing health, is widely credited with undermining communist rule in the Soviet bloc, and is still regarded with suspicion in some Russian quarters.
Although many of Russia's 143 million citizens are nominally Orthodox, the lifting of the ban on religious practice has seen a variety of faiths and cults flourish -- to the consternation of the Orthodox leadership, which won support for strict legal controls on the activities of rival faiths.
The law, introduced under former president Boris Yeltsin, has raised concerns in the West about religious freedoms in post-Soviet Russia.