Catholic, and a few of Russia's ethnic minority communities (such as the Circassians) also have small Catholic populations. The Catholic Archbishop of Moscow has voiced his support for religious education in state sponsored schools, citing the examples of other countries. Relations with the Russian Orthodox church have been rocky for nearly a millennium, and attempts at re-establishing Catholicism have met with opposition. Pope John Paul II for years expressed a desire to visit Russia, but the Russian Orthodox Church resisted. In April 2002, Bishop Jerzy Mazur of the Diocese of Saint Joseph at Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia was stripped of his visa, forcing the appointment of a new bishop for that diocese; he is now the bishop of the Diocese of Elk in the Catholic Church in Poland. In 2002, five foreign Catholic priests were denied visas to return to Russia, construction of a new cathedral was blocked in Pskov, and a church in southern Russia was shot at. On Gregorian Christmas Day 2005, Russian Orthodox activists planned to picket outside of Moscow's Catholic Cathedral, but the picket was cancelled. Despite the recent thawing of relations with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, there are still issues such as the readiness of the police to protect Catholics and other minorities from persecution. One thousand Russian Catholics gathered in the Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Moscow to watch the funeral of Pope John Paul II. A 2004 Ecumenical conference was organized for Russia's "traditional religions" Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism, and therefore excluded Catholicism. Latin Church dioceses The ecclesiastical province of Moscow consists of the archdiocese of Moscow with three suffragan dioceses in Saratov, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk. These four dioceses comprise the whole of Russia a part of the Sakhalin Oblast, which forms the Apostolic Prefecture of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk. Archdiocese of Moscow Diocese of Saratov Diocese of Irkutsk Diocese of Novosibirsk Apostolic Prefecture of Yuzhno Sakhalinsk These dioceses and this apostolic prefecture all belong to the Latin Church. There is a separate jurisdiction for those of the Byzantine Rite (see Russian Greek Catholic Church), called the Apostolic Exarchate of Russia, but it has few followers. There has been no exarch since 1951, but in 2004 Latin Bishop Joseph Werth was appointed Ordinary for Byzantine Catholics in Russia. The then Apostolic Administrations were formed into the current archdiocese in Moscow and the three dioceses in February 2002. Crimea Even though