church watchers see as a Russian crack-down against non-Orthodox believers and missionary workers, BosNewsLife learned Thursday April 11.
Priest Stefano Caprio, who is in charge of two parishes in towns near the Russian capital, was stopped at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo-2 airport where without warning his visa was taken away, said the Keston News Service (KNS), which monitors religious persecution.
Since 1990 Father Caprio, an Italian citizen, has been priest of the Catholic parishes in Vladimir and Ivanovo, and has taught at the St Thomas Aquinas College of Catholic Theology in Moscow and the Russian State Humanities University.
BLACK LIST
Father Caprio suggested he may be on a black list following after the Russian newspaper Versiya alleged he headed a network of Vatican spies operating in Russia.
"These accusations were inspired by my years as a student in the Russicum,” he told KNS. The Russicum is a Catholic college founded in Rome in 1927 to train priests to replace what is seen as the dying Russian Orthodox Church.
After the Second Vatican Council, the purpose of the Russicum was reviewed and the Vatican decided to work together with the Orthodox Church to promote a new evangelization. However, the Russian Orthodox hierarchy still views the Russicum’s graduates with suspicion, KNS analysts say.
SUSPICION RAISED
However the suspicion raised by Orthodox and Government officials is not limited to the Catholic Church. Last month, a Pentecostal pastor from Latvia was refused entry to Russia, where officials have also accused the Christian aid organization The Salvation Army of intervention in the country’s domestic affairs.
Anatoly Pchelintsev, director of the Moscow-based Institute for Religion and Law, told KNS that on 14 March the Pentecostal pastor Aleksei Ledyayev, who had arrived from the Latvian capital Riga for a meeting with fellow pastors, was detained at Sheremetyevo-2 airport.
Officials of the Federal border police reportedly held him under lock and key for 10 hours without explanation, before escorting him onto a flight for Vilnius, KNS said. The Russian Foreign Ministry defended Russia’s decision not to give visa to some Christians.
NO REASONS
"We have the right to do this, just like any other country, and we do not have to give any reasons," a Foreign Ministry official told KNS. Two meetings were reportedly scheduled Thursday, April 11 to seek to resolve the case, KNS reported.
The news agency said that the Russian ambassador to the Vatican has been summoned to discuss the case with Vatican officials, while an official of the Italian embassy in Moscow is to meet the head of the foreign ministry’s consular department.
