BUCHAREST, Romania - President Ion Iliescu said Monday the state was unable to force the restitution of Catholic Church property seized by the Communists.
Iliescu was responding to a request by Pope John Paul II on Saturday for Romania to hand back Eastern Rite Catholic churches, confiscated in 1948 when the Communists came to power and banned the Eastern Rite because its believers professed loyalty to a foreign power — the pope.
Authorities seized almost 2,500 churches then from the Catholics and handed them to the Orthodox Church. The ban was lifted after communism ended in 1989 but only about 120 of the 2,500 churches have been handed back.
"The state cannot interfere in restituting churches to the Catholic Church," said Iliescu, adding that handing back Catholic property, "is a bit more complicated because the state cannot interfere in the church hierarchy."
Speaking at a conference regarding the role of churches in Romania's drive to join NATO and the European Union, Iliescu said that while the Vatican could decide the fate of its property, according to Orthodox rules, only local worshipers could decide ownership of a church.
Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, however, said Monday that Parliament might adopt draft legislation the fall regarding the return of church property seized by the Communists.
Almost 90 percent of Romania's 23 million are Orthodox, whereas those professing to belong to the Eastern Rite Catholic church have shrunk to about 1 percent.
John Paul visited Romania in 1999 — the first Roman Catholic pontiff to come to a mainly Orthodox country since the Eastern church broke from Rome in the Great Schism of 1054. He has since visited several other mainly Orthodox countries but has yet to visit Russia.
The pope has made reconciliation among Christians a priority for the start of Christianity's third millennium