An Inside the Vatican Magazine Newsflash

Holy Thursday, March 20, 2008

Mikhail Gorbachev, Christian

By Dr. Robert Moynihan

This is an amazing bit of news for Holy Week. The story is now all over the internet, but just in case you haven't heard about it, here it is:

The former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, walks in Assisi, Italy, with Franciscan friars. Gorbachev visited Assisi recently to pray at the tomb of St. Francis, who lived 800 years ago, from 1181-1226

Mikhail Gorbachev, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi. The visit, which reportedly took place on Saturday, March 15, was evidently a surprise. It is not clear whether there was any preparation whatsoever, even informally. The Italian news agency AGI launched the story on March 15 with these words: "A pleasant surprise today for the friars of the Sacro Convento (of Assisi): Mikhail Gorbachev, accompanied by his daughter, paid an unexpected visit to the Basilica of St. Francis."

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.

His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.

"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus [the Latin for "another Christ"], the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added.

Mr Gorbachev's surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.

Mr Gorbachev, 77, was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church and his parents were Christians.

In addition, the parents of his wife Raisa were deeply religious and were killed during the Second World War for having religious icons in their home.

Ronald Reagan, the former United States president, allegedly told his close aides on a number of occasions that he felt his opponent during the Cold War was a "closet believer."

Mr Reagan held deep religious convictions himself. However, until now Mr Gorbachev has allowed himself to express only pantheistic views, saying in one interview "nature is my god."

After his prayers, Mr Gorbachev toured the Basilica of St Francis and asked in particular to be shown an icon of St Francis portraying his "dream at Spoleto."

St Francis, who lived in the 12th century, was a troubadour and a poet before the spiritual vision caused him to return to Assisi and contemplate a religious life.

Even in his early days, St Francis helped the poor, once giving all of his money to a beggar. As well as spending time in the wilderness, he also nursed lepers and eventually became a priest.

Mikhail Gorbachev admits he is a Christian

By Malcolm Moore in Rome

Last Updated: 3:04am GMT 19/03/2008

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.

His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.

"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus, the other Christ," said Mr Gorbachev. "His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life," he added.

Mr Gorbachev's surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.

Mr Gorbachev, 77, was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church and his parents were Christians.

In addition, the parents of his wife Raisa were deeply religious and were killed during the Second World War for having religious icons in their home.

Ronald Reagan, the former United States president, allegedly told his close aides on a number of occasions that he felt his opponent during the Cold War was a "closet believer".

Mr Reagan held deep religious convictions himself. However, until now Mr Gorbachev has allowed himself to express only pantheistic views, saying in one interview "nature is my god".

After his prayers, Mr Gorbachev toured the Basilica of St Francis and asked in particular to be shown an icon of St Francis portraying his "dream at Spoleto".

St Francis, who lived in the 12th century, was a troubadour and a poet before the spiritual vision caused him to return to Assisi and contemplate a religious life.

Even in his early days, St Francis helped the poor, once giving all of his money to a beggar. As well as spending time in the wilderness, he also nursed lepers and eventually became a priest.

"It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb," said Mr Gorbachev.

"I feel very emotional to be here at such an important place not only for the Catholic faith, but for all humanity."

He also asked the monks for theological books to help him understand St Francis's life.

Father Miroslavo Anuskevic, who accompanied the former Soviet leader, said: "He was not recognised by any of the worshippers in the church, and silently meditated at the tomb for a while. He seemed a man deeply inspired by charity, and told me that he was involved in a project to help children with cancer.

"He talked a lot about Russia and said that even though the transition to democracy had been very important

for the world, it was very painful for Russia. He said it was a country which has a great history, and also a great spirituality."

From Times Online

March 19, 2008

Mikhail Gorbachev is a Christian say Franciscan friars

Richard Owen of The Times in Rome

Franciscan friars at Assisi have confirmed that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet President, is a Christian after he was seen praying at the tomb of St Francis.

Mr Gorbachev has long acknowledged that he was influenced by his grandmother, an Orthodox believer and is a a regular participant in peace conferences in the Umbrian town where St Francis is buried. Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, has also turned to Orthodox Christianity and wears a cross round his neck.

Father Miroslavo Anuskevic, a Lithuanian priest at the Basilica of St Francis, said he had spotted Mr Gorbachev - for years a professed Communist atheist - praying anonymously "in silent meditation" for half an hour at the tomb of St Francis "with very Oriental intensity" with his eyes closed, alongside his daughter Irina.

President Reagan is said to have often wondered whether the Soviet Union's last leader was a "closet Christian," observing to aides at one point during a US-Soviet summit "I think he believes". Mr Gorbachev's parents reportedly kept Orthodox icons hidden behind pictures of Stalin and Lenin, as did the parents of his late wife, Raisa, who were reportedly executed for the offence.

Russia renews hostilites with Britain

Father Anuskevic told La Stampa Mr Gorbachev had observed to him that "St Francis is for me the other Christ. His story fascinates me and has played a fundamental role in my life.....It was through St Francis that I came to the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb. I feel very emotional to be in a place which is so important not only for the Catholic faith but for all humanity."

Mr Gorbachev talked at length about his humanitarian and charitable work, Father Anuskevic said. He had also spoken about about Russia "and how important it is for the world that the transition to democracy, although painful for Russia, must endure". He had said that Russia was "a country of great spirituality", and had stressed the need to protect the Earth's environment as God's creation.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Mikhail Gorbachev: No longer a "closet believer"

This (and this) provides a whole new perspective on the role Mikhail Gorbachev played in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism.

One obvious question is this: "What did Reagan know, and when did he know it?"

Here's an interesting aside, courtesy of Peter Robinson at NRO:

Whenever Ronald Reagan would mention his suspicion that Mikhail Gorbachev was a secret believer, everyone on the White House staff would scoff, thinking the president naive. When I had the opportunity to speak to Gorbachev a couple of years ago, however, I found myself concluding that Reagan had been onto something after all. Why, I asked, had Gorbachev refrained from putting down the revolution of 1989, just as Khrushchev had put down the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Brezhnev had put down the Prague Spring of 1968? "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan," Gorbachev replied. "Christian morality."

So, Reagan was right all along. Again.

This really makes you wonder. Reagan and Gorbachev held several private meetings with each other over the years. We know that President Reagan brought up the issue of religious freedom in the former Soviet Union on numerous occasions. Is it possible that in the course of their discussions that Gorbachev actually told Reagan that he was a Christian?

During his presidency, Reagan often repeated an old Russian proverb: "Doveryai, no proveryai", "trust, but verify," citing it as a fundamental rule for dealing with the Soviets. So, how was it that an old cold warrior like Reagan came to be so trusting of a "Godless Communist" like Mr. Gorbachev? Many of Reagan's closest friends - conservatives who despised Communism as much as he did - were perplexed at Reagan's seeming naivete in his arms control negotiations with Gorbachev. They accused him of selling out America's interests - not to mention his own principles - in what they viewed as a far-too-warm embrace of the Soviet leader. As Dinesh D'Souza wrote back in 1997:

During Reagan's second term, when he supported Gorbachev's reform efforts and pursued arms-reduction agreements with him, many conservatives denounced his apparent change of heart. "Ignorant and pathetic" was the way Charles Krauthammer viewed Reagan's behavior. William F. Buckley Jr. urged Reagan to reconsider his positive assessment of the Gorbachev regime: "To greet it as if it were no longer evil is on the order of changing our entire position toward Adolf Hitler." George Will mourned that "Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy."

So, what did President Reagan know and when did he know it? Could the foundation of trust between the two most powerful leaders in the world have been built upon their shared Christian faith?

One was able to proclaim his faith publicly. The other could only hope that one day he and his countrymen would be allowed to do the same. Did that hope help bring the Cold War to its end? Just asking.

Mikhail Gorbachev as a Christian

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Several newspapers have reported that Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the USSR, is a Christian.What is surprising, however, is not so much the reports themselves as the source: the reports have come from Italy.It will be interesting to see if there are any follow-ups in the media, saying something about how Gorbachev practises his Christian faith back home in Russia. Does he have a parish and a parish priest? Where are they, and what do they have to say?

According to the reports, Gorbachev’s parents, and his wife’s parents, were Orthodox Christians, but the recent reports imply that Mikhail Gorbachev himself is a Roman Catholic. It would be interesting to know whether he actually is.

Francis of Assisi is not an Orthodox saint. He was canonised by the Roman Catholic Church after its schism from Orthodoxy in the 11th century.

Orthodox Christians hold differing views about him. Some admire him, or at least admire certain aspects of his life and work. Others point to other aspects, such as his stigmatistion, and say that no true saint could be stigmatised: such things are a manifestation of prelest (spiritual delusion).

Francis of Assisi was the first Roman Catholic saint to be stigmatised, and his stigmata were commemorated by the Franciscan Order on 17 September, but not by the RC Church as a whole. The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to stigmatisation has been cautious, though it has not been as opposed to it as the Orthodox Church. Such things did not appear until the 13th century (well after the Great Schism), and then only in the West. It was perhaps a reflection of the increasing emphasis in the West on the sufferings and death of Christ, rather than on the incarnation or resurrection, that people began to be stigmatised, manifesting in their bodies some kind of replication of the wounds of Christ in hands and feet, and sometimes the side.

At best, Orthodox Christians have a qualified admiration for Francis of Assissi, admiring his devotion to evangelical poverty and service to the poor, and his preaching of the gospel, and don’t pay much attention to such things as his stigmatisation.

The reports in the Western media about Mikhail Gorbachev being a Christian, with their stress on his devotion to Francis of Assisi, will therefore send mixed signals to Orthodox readers, and some may be tempted to “join the dots”? and fill in the gaps of the reports themselves, and jump to perhaps unwarranted conclusions.

In Russia, immediately after the fall of Bolshevism, the Church was the most trusted institution in society. People did not trust politicians, the army, business, and other institutions, and many felt betrayed by them. One result of this was that politicians were always looking for photo-ops with church leaders in the hope that some of the magic pixie dust of public approval would brush off onto them. This does not mean that every politician who professed to be a Christian was insincere, but there was a very clear ulterior motive.

This does not apply to Gorbachev, who retired from politics after the dissolution of the USSR, and no longer had a political axe to grind. But what he does and what happens to him can provide a grindstone for other people with axes to grind. The relationships between the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Vatican (journalists, please note, it is Patriarchate, not Patriarchy) are rather sensitive, and most of the reports so far could signal an attitude of Vatican one-upmanship, even if the journalists who wrote them did not intend to do so.

March 19, 2008 Gorbachev a Christian; British press confused

A week or so ago I lamented that when it comes to religion, the British press rarely gets anything right. They are incredibly incurious and inaccurate.

Today we read in the UK Telegraph that Mikael Gorbachev has admitted he is a Christian. Get that? He “admits” he’s a Christian.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.
[…]Mr Gorbachev’s surprise visit confirmed decades of rumours that, although he was forced to publicly pronounce himself an atheist, he was in fact a Christian, and casts a meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1989 in a new light.

Mr Gorbachev, 77, was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church and his parents were Christians.

In addition, the parents of his wife Raisa were deeply religious and were killed during the Second World War for having religious icons in their home.
[…]After his prayers, Mr Gorbachev toured the Basilica of St Francis and asked in particular to be shown an icon of St Francis portraying his “dream at Spoleto”.

St Francis, who lived in the 12th century, was a troubadour and a poet before the spiritual vision caused him to return to Assisi and contemplate a religious life.

Even in his early days, St Francis helped the poor, once giving all of his money to a beggar. As well as spending time in the wilderness, he also nursed lepers and eventually became a priest.

“It was through St Francis that I arrived at the Church, so it was important that I came to visit his tomb,” said Mr Gorbachev.

This Telegraph article is a mass of inaccuracies of ambiguities. St. Francis was never a traveling entertainer and he was never a priest, either. He was - reluctantly and under obedience - a Catholic Deacon, like our pal Deacon Greg. Francis was the son of a wealthy textile merchant who lived a very debauched life and romantically went off to fight in the crusades before an illness sent him home. A conversion experience occurred wherein he saw Christ ask him to “rebuild my church” (and the Catholic church needed spiritual rebuilding then, as it has from time to time). Francis renounced his wealth and lived the life of a preacher and beggar while literally rebuilding a church and forming the Franciscan order and (with St. Clare) the “poor ladies” (now known as the Poor Clares) who embrace monastic poverty. Yes, he kissed a leper - he did it because he wanted to get over his repulsion of them, and it did the trick. Two excellent books on Francis are featured below.

It is worth remembering that Gorbachev said that the collapse of the Soviet Union would have been impossible without the influence of Pope John Paul II. At the pope’s death he reminisced about their meeting:

“He said, ‘I don’t serve any political parties, I serve God,’ ” Gorbachev recalled. ” ‘So I’m after the same things that you are trying to achieve with your perestroika.’ ”

Gorbachev said he told the pope he “had a lot of criticism for him, too.”

A day after their meeting, Gorbachev said, he traveled to Malta to meet with President George H.W. Bush. They later announced that the United States and Soviet Union were no longer enemies. “So, see, it’s all interconnected,” Gorbachev said.

Anyway - this is good news, although it is difficult to tell, from the shoddy reportage, whether Gorby is Russian Orthodox or Roman Catholic. The fact that he is traveling with Lithuanian Catholic Franciscan priests, and his remark, “it was through Francis that I arrived at the Church” suggests he might have gone Roman, but this article does not make it plain.

How interesting, though, that Gorby is surrounded by Franciscans and that President Bush had Franciscans around him when he recently toured the Holy Land. Francis’ men have always been the counterpart to worldly power.

Certainly does seem like things are aligning. Deacon Greg says it’s been an amazing Holly Week newswise.

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