ABSTRACT
Orthodox-Catholic ties and the Albertyn experiment The Soviet government’s continuing policy of persecution disturbed Pius XI, but his optimism about Catholicism’s future in Soviet Russia did not flag. He looked for new ways to penetrate Soviet Russia. In 1924 the Vatican officially reorganized and sanctioned an organization it called Catholica Unio, which had the goal of unifying the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. The movement started in Vienna in 1922 and was initially called the Ukrainian Religious Committee. Catholica Unio had branches in Europe, particularly in Germany, and in the United States, where it became part of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.1 Its main activity was raising funds to help improve Catholic-Orthodox relations for the purpose of unifying the Churches under the pope. It helped improve communication between Orthodox and Catholics in Europe, but the Soviet government’s vicious and unmitigated persecution of both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in the USSR proscribed any hope of establishing an opportunity, let alone a basis, for interfaith dialogue. It did make a major effort during the famine in 1932-33 to collect funds to feed starving Catholics in the USSR.2
