MOSCOW – As they gathered by the hundreds in Moscow’s Church of the Immaculate Conception last week to watch Pope John Paul II’s funeral on a screen hung over the altar, Russian Catholics couldn’t help but reflect on the great unfulfilled dream of his papacy.

For them, his legacy is tinged with bitter irony. For while John Paul traveled more widely than any pope in history, he never once set foot in the world’s biggest country. And while he has been praised around the world as a religious unifier, John Paul failed in his self-professed mission to reconcile the world’s two largest Christian churches: the Roman Catholic and the Russian Orthodox.

“For us, it is the great sorrow of his passing,” said a 52-year-old Muscovite attending the service, Vera Varchuk. “We prayed and prayed that he would come, but the wounds are very deep and they will take a long time to heal.”

From the first days of his papacy, John Paul spoke often of healing the great schism that split Christendom in 1054 between the Vatican and the Eastern Orthodox Church. As the first Slavic pope, he saw it as his special destiny to bring together Christianity’s Eastern and Western branches, which he often described as two great lungs providing oxygen to a single body.

His first real chance appeared with the changes that swept across Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s – changes John Paul is widely credited with helping to bring about. In 1990, the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, paid a historic visit to Rome and invited the pope to Moscow. The collapse of the Soviet Union two years later – and the subsequent lifting of Communist restrictions on religion – fueled hopes that a reconciliation could take place.

Instead, relations have worsened. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II – who declined to attend John Paul’s funeral – has repeatedly accused the Vatican of trying to poach converts in Russia and refused to approve a papal visit. Relations hit their lowest point in 2002, when the Vatican created four new dioceses in Russia. At the prompting of the politically influential Orthodox Church, the Russian government then expelled a number of Catholic priests and denied others visas. The Vatican’s last attempt to improve ties was in August, when it offered to have John Paul personally return a revered Orthodox icon, known as the Mother of God of Kazan, which had been hanging in his private chambers. Alexy declared it a fake and turned down the offer.

A spokesman for the Orthodox Church, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, said it is the Vatican’s failure to show proper respect for Russia’s traditional faith that is causing friction.

“There is no question the Catholic Church is proselytizing in Russia,” he said. “And how could this be appropriate in a country with a 1,000-year-old Christian tradition? They are behaving like Russians are ignorant people in need of enlightenment.”

Mr. Chaplin said that among other missionary activities, the Vatican has set up orphanages around Russia that teach Catholic traditions to children who have already been baptized into the Orthodox Church.

The Vatican denies any missionary work. Catholic leaders say they are only ministering to Russia’s tiny Catholic minority – about 600,000 people in a country of 144 million.

“Our only goal is pastoral activity among Catholics already here,” said a priest at St. Louis Church in Moscow, Father Igor Kovalevsky. “It is ridiculous to say that we are proselytizing here. If that was our goal then you could say that we are doing a very, very bad job.”

Mr. Kovalevsky said the patriarchate’s position is based on a “misunderstanding of our activities in Russia.”

“We are almost the same confession, we are sister churches,” he said. “But if the Russian Orthodox Church is not prepared to accept that, all we can do is wait and pray.”

The wait is likely to be a long one. Experts say the next pope is unlikely to put as much importance on the reconciliation of the two traditions and the Orthodox Church has shown no signs of softening its position.

Even the patriarch’s official reaction to John Paul’s death was subtly critical, with Alexy saying in a public statement that he hoped “the coming of a new era in the life of the Roman Catholic church will help restore relations of mutual respect and brotherly Christian love between our churches.”

Some in Russia have reacted with outright hostility since the pope’s death, including a nationalist member of Parliament, Alexei Mitrofanov, who proposed restricting news coverage of the pope’s death. “It is obvious that this is propaganda on a grand scale seeking to promote the Vatican and the Catholic Church,” he said. A vote on the proposal failed to pass, but won the support of 98 deputies.

Mrs. Varchuk, who was baptized in the Orthodox Church but converted to Catholicism five years ago, said she doubts attitudes will change any time soon.

“It isn’t easy being a Catholic in Russia,” Mrs. Varchuk said. “But this pope taught us to be patient, and I believe that some day we will be accepted.”