MOSCOW -- The bitter argument that erupted in public last week between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church comes down to this: Who has the right to save Vitaly Kulyagin's soul? He is a 39-year-old aerospace engineer dressed in jeans and a fleece jacket, his brown hair tied in a tidy bun. He spoke about his reasons for embracing Roman Catholicism instead of the Orthodox Church, the faith of his Russian ancestors.
"To my mind, the Catholic religion is the most progressive," Kulyagin said during a break from his religious studies at the Immaculate Conception Church, north of central Moscow. "It is the most mobile, it has not stopped developing. To my mind, the Orthodox Church stopped developing in the 15th century."
That's the kind of talk that Russia's native church doesn't want to hear. For years, Orthodox officials have accused the Vatican of aggressively seeking converts in the former Soviet Union. Last week the Vatican seemed to confirm the Orthodox hierarchy's suspicions by announcing the creation of four full-fledged dioceses in Russia. That decision will give more formal status to Catholic bishops in Moscow and three other cities.
Patriarch Alexy II and his church's Holy Synod denounced the decision as "an unfriendly act" intended to lay "claim to the flock of all the Russian people, who are culturally, spiritually and historically the flock of the Russian Orthodox Church." In other words, they accused Catholic leaders of trying to poach Russian souls.
One of those souls belongs to Kulyagin. After much thought over a decade, the former atheist decided to become a Catholic. He and about 130 other Russians are enrolled in religious training courses at Immaculate Conception, one of two active Catholic churches in Moscow. The converts expect to be baptized by summer.
As for the Orthodox Church's claim to be Kulyagin's only legitimate spiritual home, he has a different view: "I am a Russian, but I am free to choose for myself."
Catholic officials here say the creation of dioceses is an administrative step to make it easier to serve parishioners, not recruit new Catholics. They point out that fewer than 1 percent of Russia's residents are Catholic, and more than 50 percent are Orthodox. "We are a minority in Russia, and we will continue to be a minority in Russia, but we want to take care of the Catholics who live in Russia," said the Rev. Igor Kowalewski, a church spokesman.
The Roman Catholic Church has attracted a steady stream of new parishioners since the fall of the Soviet Union. A century ago, Catholics in Russia numbered about 30,000. There might be 1.3 million now. At least some of them are ethnic Russians looking for an alternative to the faith of their fathers.
Catholic leaders say they first try to persuade Russians to consider joining the Orthodox faith. But they do not turn away nonmembers like Kulyagin who are determined to be baptized as Catholics.
For some young Russians, the Roman Catholic Church represents a clean break with the Soviet past. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russian Catholics fiercely resisted state control and paid a heavy price. Catholicism was almost wiped out by Stalin -- most churches were closed or forcibly converted to Orthodox churches. Thousands of Catholics were shot, beaten or starved to death for their faith. Thousands more were deported to Siberia and Central Asia.
Klementina Klimova, 66, recalls the KGB arresting the priest of her church in central Ukraine in the 1940s. He was never seen again. At the same time, police rounded up about 160 Catholic men and took them to the cathedral's basement, which was turned into a makeshift prison. The men were beaten, interrogated and starved, she said. Within a few weeks, all were dead. The cathedral was turned over to the Orthodox Church.
When the Orthodox priest arrived, Klimova said, he asked some of the parishioners to help him clean the basement. They found the remains of 12 people, left behind by the security forces. "I remember the 12 coffins, newly made," said Klimova, who lives in Moscow and attends services at Immaculate Conception. "The priest said they were people murdered by fascists. But they were not."
Soviet authorities in Moscow seized two of the city's three churches, turning one into a cinema and converting the 3,000-capacity Immaculate Conception church first into temporary housing, later into a school, then a laboratory and finally a four-story factory loft building.
The domed Church of St. Louis of France, near KGB headquarters, was the only Catholic church in Moscow to remain open after 1937, church officials say. But state security agents watched who came and went and tried to recruit informants in the congregation. The agency eventually installed cameras at the entrances.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended overt repression of religious organizations. But non-Orthodox faiths say more-subtle forms of discrimination persist, sanctioned by a 1997 law that makes it difficult for religions with mainly non-native clergy to operate in Russia.
The Rev. Joseph Zaniewski, who leads services at Immaculate Conception, is a Russian citizen. But two of his three vicars are from Poland, and their work is limited here because they have not been granted permanent resident status. (One law requires residency permits for most religious work; another forbids permits for religious work.) So they hold visas that must be renewed every year.
Russian law also makes it difficult for non-Orthodox faiths to build places of worship or to recover property seized during the Soviet era.
When Catholics tried to reclaim Immaculate Conception in 1989, four floors of offices, storage space and a machine shop filled its soaring interior. The courtyard was home to weeds and rusting factory equipment. The man who claimed to own the building scornfully offered to rent part of the church to the parish.
Catholics began holding services on the steps. In an escalating series of protests, parishioners invaded the building, dragging machinery outside and demolishing interior walls. In March 1995, they clashed with police.
Under pressure, city officials forced the return of the church in 1996. After extensive renovation, the church was re-consecrated as a cathedral in December 1999. Today, about 1,500 Muscovites attend Mass there each Sunday, with larger crowds showing up on religious holidays.
Pope John Paul II has sought to end centuries of rancor between the Catholic Church and other faiths, including Islam and Judaism. Last year he became the first pope in 13 centuries to set foot in Greece and apologized for 1,000 years of Roman Catholic mistreatment of Orthodox Christians.
The pope has repeatedly sought to meet with Alexy II, to help heal the divisions between the churches. Their rivalry dates to the schism of 1054, which divided eastern and western Christian traditions. But Alexy II has refused, pointing to the return of Orthodox churches to Catholic control and the Vatican's alleged missionary zeal in the former Soviet Union.
Many devout Russians pay little attention to the friction. Valentina Avdeyeva, 81, began attending Mass at Immaculate Conception a couple of years ago. She said she has no plans to convert but talks of feeling "comfortable" beneath the cathedral's vaulted roof. "There is no difference between the churches," she said, "because there is only one God."