Bulgaria is the sixth Eastern Orthodox country to be visited by the head of the Roman Catholic Church. John Paul II has already been to Romania, Georgia, Greece, Ukraine and Armenia.

John Paul II arrived in Romania in May 1999 at the invitation of both President Emil Constantinescu and Patriarch Theoctist, who invited him to visit the Holy Synod. Reports of the international news agencies said that 100,000 worshippers attended the liturgy that Patriarch Theoctist held in the presence of the Pontiff. The following year Romania received a papal donation of 100,000 dollars for the construction of an orthodox church in Bucharest.

Georgia was the second orthodox country to which the Pope made a trip. The 1999 visit was part of a pilgrimage that also took him to India. In an official appeal just before the mass the primates of the Georgian Orthodox Church called on all orthodox Christians not to attend the mass telling them they were not supposed to be at a religious service of a different religion.

In May 2001 the Pope went on a pilgrimage to Greece in the footsteps of Apostle Paul. His visit was part of a tour of Greece, Syria and Malta. It was preceded by protests by the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church and clergy.

In 1992 the Holy Synod called upon the government to sever diplomatic relations with the Vatican for what it saw as the Vatican's expansion into the traditional Orthodox countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism. By March 2001 the Greek Holy Synod had softened its positionand decided not to oppose to the Pope's wish to make a pilgrimage to the holy places in Greece, Syria and Malta. During his Greek visit the John Paul II preyed for forgiveness of the sins of Catholics against Orthodox Christiansduring the 10-century Schism, including those committed during the Fourth Crusade and the capturing of Constantinople.

Having visited Athens, in June of the same year the Pope visited Ukraine. The visit drew protests both from the clergy and from the patriarchate that controls the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Even Russian Patriarch Aleksy II said clearly that he was unhappy with the pontifical visit.

In Ukraine, John Paul II served two masses in the open air: in Kiev and Lviv. These drew a crowd of 2 million worshippers, including people from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic and the Baltic republics. Apart from the usual meetings and masses, John Paul II visited the monument of Babiy Yar near Kiev to pay tribute to the scores of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis in 1941.In September 2001 the Pope went to Armenia.