Mixed Messages

Pope John Paul II uttered thousands of words in his homilies, speeches and prayers this week in Ukraine. But to the locals one sentence resonated above all others: "Nowhere in the world is there another Ukraine, nowhere is there another Dnieper."

It is a line from Taras Shevchenko, the 19th century peasant poet revered as the Ukrainian Pushkin, the creator of literary Ukrainian. The Pope uttered these words in his introductory address at Borispol Airport in Kiev as he opened his five-day pilgrimage. But all week long, this single line resounded from the corridors of power in the capital Kiev to the farming villages of western Ukraine only a few kilometers from the Polish border.

The Pope is fond of quoting poets and philosophers on foreign visits. But this was no casual cultural reference. Few Western observers may have heeded them, but to Ukrainians this line from Shevchenko means only one thing: ardent support for a free, independent Ukraine. "It is the loudest call a person can sound for an independent Ukraine," said Oleksander Tkachenko, head of Novy Kanal, Ukraine's most influential independent television station. "That a Pope should quote these words, words associated under Soviet rule with dissident nationalism, has won the Vatican many, many friends here."

No one was happier than Leonid Kuchma, the Ukrainian President and a colorless former boss of one of the U.S.S.R.'s biggest missile plants. Kuchma has been besieged by scandal for months, since accusations surfaced last winter—allegedly supported by tape recordings surreptitiously made in the presidential office—that he was involved in the murder of a young Internet investigative journalist, Georgi Gongadze. The specter of Gongadze's unsolved murder—his headless corpse was found in the woods outside Kiev last November—is enhanced by the rampant allegations that the Kuchma government has long been riddled with corruption and graft. For Kuchma, the papal pilgrimage could not have come at a better time.

Ukrainians not only heard the Pope support a free Ukraine, they also heard him call for a "European" Ukraine. "Ukraine has a clearly European vocation, emphasized also by the Christian roots of your culture," the pope said in Kiev. European Union membership, and even NATO, loom high on Kuchma's wish list. But the months of scandal have dimmed the chances of either coming on his watch. The one figure capable of assuaging Western fears, and pushing for genuine reform, is the former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. But Yushchenko, a telegenic former Central Bank chairman, was ousted this spring in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. Reforms, the Pope said wishfully, are under way. But the country that once ranked among the biggest per capita recipients of U.S. aid now ranks among the world leaders in corruption.

The Pope made sure to speak of the plight of Ukraine's past victims. At no point, however, did he dare mention the name Gongadze. He did not even venture a subtle nod in the direction of protecting human rights, a free press and political dissent. To many who knew Gongadze, the silence was deafening. Addressing Ukraine's youth, the Pope urged them to "Be brave and free! Do not let yourselves be taken in by the deceptive mirages of an easy happiness." Georgi Gongadze was, by the accounts of colleagues and readers, far from a person easily deceived by alluring mirages. What better model, Gongadze's former colleagues ask, could the Pope have found of how to live in the pursuit of democratic, humanist values?

Meanwhile, half a world away, Mykola Melnychenko, the former Presidential bodyguard, who claims to have made those explosive tape recordings in Kuchma's office, sat in Washington further spinning the web of intrigue and accusation against Kuchma. Melnychenko continues to insist that the tapes are genuine. In Kiev, however, the panic of the spring's scandals appears to have subsided. The opposition politely refrained from staging any major public protests for fear of tarnishing the Papal visit. Former Prime Minister Yushchenko has fallen quiet. He was among those secular leaders who met the Pope, but he has been spending most of his time this summer at his dacha. Those fortunate enough to reach the former Prime Minister by phone these days are likely to hear the clucking of chickens in the background.

And so across Ukraine, as the pope finished his historic pilgrimage, little was said of Gongadze, while much was said about how wonderful it was that the Polish pope had quoted the great poet Shevchenko, and how the papal reference to "the only Ukraine" and "the only Dnieper" in the world would surely bring good things to a people who deserved better.

Ukraine, to be sure, has suffered a bad press in its first decade of post-Soviet sovereignty. Many Ukrainians naturally rejoiced that the Pope had thrust their land into the headlines for something other than corruption or Chernobyl. But many also lamented that the Pope had refrained from even the most polite of references to Ukraine's political and economic troubles. With regret, they noted that this is not the Pope of the 1980s, the supporter of Solidarity, but a conservative leader in the waning years of his papacy, bent on using his remaining strength and time to build a bridge between the eastern and western arms of Christianity. A noble cause for the Vatican, many agreed. But, they wondered as the Pope left Ukraine, at what cost at home?