Moscow
A government advisory committee on religious extremism has named the Roman Catholic Church as a possible threat to Russian national security, the Moscow Times reported this week. All religions other than Russian Orthodox, Judaism, and Buddhism—which are considered traditional Russian faiths—are cited as “foreign confessions” with the potential to incite extremism, with Catholicism at the top of the list. The committee recommends that police keep close tabs on Catholic officials and priests. Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, head of the Catholic church in Russia, was outraged. “How can a civilized society identify a church with 2,000 years of history…with such a frightening phenomenon as terrorism?” he asked. “This is unheard of.”
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