Putin to hold first meeting with Pope on Italy trip

ROME (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin begins a trip to Italy on Tuesday and will hold his first meeting with Pope Benedict, who wants to improve the Vatican's strained relations with the Russian Orthodox Church.

In a visit lasting just over 24 hours, starting on Tuesday afternoon, Putin meets President Giorgio Napolitano, who, like Putin, is an ex-communist, and Prime Minister Romano Prodi.

On Wednesday Putin and Prodi will lead delegations at a bilateral summit in southern Bari, where they will sign accords ranging from energy and banking to the adoption of Russian children.

Putin is due to spend an hour at the Vatican on Tuesday night and knows the 79-year-old Pope would like to visit Russia. Such a visit would need the blessing of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexiy II.

Pope John Paul, who died in 2005, had standing invitations from former Russian presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin but was not able to make a trip because of the thorny relations with the Orthodox Church.

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Orthodox Church has accused Catholics of using new freedoms to poach souls from the Orthodox, something the Vatican denies.

The late Polish Pope's relations with the Russian Orthodox Church were also touchy because he was a strident anti-communist and the Russian Church had been for the most part compliant with successive Soviet regimes.

Sergei Prikhodko, Putin's chief foreign policy adviser, told reporters Putin will discuss with the Pope the religion situation in Russia and relations between the two Churches.

"In my opinion Benedict XVI has taken a very constructive stand," Prikhodko said. "The president favors improving relations between the two Churches."

But he ruled out that Putin, 54, would negotiate a meeting between the Pope and Alexiy. "There are no middlemen in the dialogue between Churches," Prikhodko said.

The Russian Orthodox Church is the most powerful of the world's Orthodox Churches, which split from Western Christianity in the Great Schism of 1054.

"The most important question for us is whether there are any improvements in the inter-Church relations," a top Orthodox cleric, Metropolitan Illarion, told the RIA-Novosti news agency.

He described Putin as a "true believer who pays much attention to the (Orthodox) Church and who always listens to the Patriarch's opinion".

Putin and Prodi agreed in January to focus their talks in Bari on boosting mutual investment and expanding trade.

Italy's energy giant Eni and Russia's Gazprom have inked a deal that gives the Russian gas monopoly a foothold in southern Europe and Eni the promise of upstream assets in Russia.

Russia's Sistema company has shown interest in buying a minority stake in Telecom Italia from Italy's Pirelli group.

(Additional reporting by Oleg Shchedrov in Bari)