MINSK
AWAITS ROMAN
POPE
Interfax-Religiia,
11
September 2020
The
Belorussian
minister of foreign affairs, Vladimir Makei, at a meeting on
Friday with a
secretary of the Holy See's Secretariat of State, Archbishop
Paul Richard
Gallagher, confirmed an invitation to Roman Pope Francis to
visit the country.
"I would
like to
convey to Pope Francis that the invitation to visit Belarus
remains in
force," Makei said.
He
recalled that
Belorussian President Alexander Lukashenko twice made an
official visit to the
Vatican and met with the pontiffs Benedict and Francis.
Makei
noted that he
considers the visit of a representative of the Vatican
Secretariat of State as
"confirmation of the existence of special relations, mutual
understanding,
and trust between Belarus and the Holy See." "We are pleased
with the
dynamic of the development of contacts at the supreme and at
high levels
between Belarus and the Vatican in recent times," the minister
added.
Archbishop
Gallagher's
working visit to Belorussia will continue through 14 September.
The
press service of the MVD announced only his meeting with Makei.
As
reported, on 31
August, Metropolitan of Minsk and Mogilev, the chairman of the
Conference of
Catholic Bishops in Belorussia, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, was
refused entry into
the country without explanation of the reasons. He was returning
from Poland
where he had been on a business trip.
"At the
Kuznitsa-Belostok-Bruzgi border crossing, border officers of the
republic of
Belarus refused entry into the country to the head of the
Belorussian Catholic
episcopate, without explanation of the reasons," a statement on
the
official website of the Roman Catholic Church in Belorussia
says. It called
attention to the fact that Kondrusiewicz is a citizen of the
republic.
Along
with this, the
official website of the Roman Catholic Church posted an excerpt
from an
interview of Kondrusiewicz with the Polish Catholic television
channel TV Trwam
in which the head of Belorussian Catholics declared that the
presidential
elections in the country on 9 August were dishonest.
On 1
September,
President Alexander Lukashenko declared that Kondrusiewicz was
not allowed into
the country because "he received an assignment on the Polish
side."
(tr. by PDS, posted 11 September 2020)
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