The Associated Press
By WILLIAM J. KOLE

Working to end a millennium of distrust between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, Pope John Paul II was reaching out to Bulgarians with a pilgrimage to a celebrated monastery.

The 82-year-old pontiff was to travel Saturday by helicopter to the southern town of Rila for a visit to the Rila Monastery, not far from the tomb of St. Ivan Rilsky, patron saint of the Bulgarian people. By making the trek to one of Bulgaria's holiest sites, John Paul was signaling his desire to bridge the rift between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Across Eastern Europe, and especially in Russia, embittered Orthodox leaders have made no secret of their resentment of Roman Catholic expansion into traditionally Orthodox countries like Bulgaria. Orthodox hard-liners consider Catholicism heresy, and many Catholics see the Orthodox faith as mystical and alien to the liturgy of Rome.

Reconciling the two estranged sisters has been a major thrust of John Paul's four-day visit, the first by a pope to this formerly communist country.

"Christ our Lord founded a single church, yet today we appear to the world divided, as if Christ himself were divided," the pope said Friday in a meeting with Patriarch Maxim, the country's top Orthodox cleric.

"One thing, however, consoles us: The estrangement between Catholics and Orthodox has never extinguished in them the desire to restore full communion," he said. Later, in an address to prominent Bulgarian artists and scientists, the pope acknowledged that "you, although not Catholic, share with us the one baptism."

The pope was to meet at the 1,000-year-old monastery with Prime Minister Simeon Saxcoburggotski, Bulgaria's popular former king, who returned to his homeland last year after decades in exile in the West and became premier when his party swept parliamentary elections.
Later Saturday, he was to return to Sofia, the capital, for meetings with the leader of Bulgaria's Muslim community and with local Catholics. There are only about 80,000 Catholics in the nation of 8 million; most live in or near the second-largest city of Plovdiv, where the pope will serve an outdoor Mass on Sunday, the final day of his visit.

The visit, John Paul's 96th overall, has been a major test of his stamina. His speech is often slurred and his hands tremble - symptoms of Parkinson's disease - and he walks with difficulty because of knee and hip ailments. For the first time, a motorized platform was used for him to get on and off the papal aircraft so he wouldn't have to climb steps.

Although the pope is being wheeled around on a special platform, he has appeared rested and stronger than he did during his 24-hour stay earlier this week in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which preceded the Bulgaria visit.

Many Bulgarians hoped the trip would finally dispel lingering suspicions that Bulgarian agents helped plot the 1981 assassination attempt on the pope in St. Peter's Square in Rome. At the time, Bulgaria's secret service was close to the Soviet KGB, which reportedly was alarmed by the pope's support for the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland.

John Paul himself sought to lay the issue to rest Friday, declaring in a meeting with President Georgi Parvanov that he never believed there was a Bulgarian connection to Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca, who shot and seriously wounded the pontiff.

An Italian court acquitted three Bulgarians of complicity, citing a lack of evidence to convict them.