Would somebody who does not use a sudo based distro please test whether this happens on your system?

1. Start kate as normal user.

2. Start a separate kate session as root using 'tdesu kate'.

Two separate sessions should be open. In the second session you should be able to view the contents of /root.

If only one session is open then you are experiencing the same problem.

No other app seems affected by this behavior.

Thanks much.

Darrell