As Catholics around the world mourn Pope Francis, many Ukrainians would remember him bitterly for failing to clearly blame Russia for its invasion and calling for Ukraine to raise the “white flag.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be one of the prominent mourners at today’s funeral for Francis, even though the pope never visited Ukraine and critics said he echoed Kremlin talking points by saying the war was “provoked” and portraying it as part of a wider global confrontation.
A senior Ukrainian official said the Argentine pontiff had been shaped by Marxist-influenced ideas and showed an “absolute ignorance of this part of the world.”
Photo: AFP
“He did not really understand and was not even trying to understand what was happening here,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
At the same time, Ukrainian officials have recognized the Vatican’s efforts in mediating prisoner exchanges and the return of children taken from occupied parts of Ukraine to Russia.
Zelenskiy said Francis had “prayed for peace in Ukraine.”
However, the official said the pope “could have done incomparably more for Ukraine,” for example, by persuading countries of the global south to support Ukraine’s struggle.
Above all, Francis “refused to make a clear distinction” between Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as the victim of the invasion, the official said.
There was frustration soon after the start of the invasion in February 2022 when the Vatican asked two lifelong friends, a Russian woman and a Ukrainian woman, to carry a cross together during a Good Friday ceremony attended by Francis in Rome.
The initiative, intended as a gesture of reconciliation, was not well received in Ukraine. Ukrainian media boycotted the broadcast of the ceremony.
Bishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, denounced an “inappropriate, premature and ambiguous idea, which does not take into account the context of Russia’s military aggression.”
Over more than three years of war, the pope repeatedly called for peace in Ukraine, but stopped short of a clear condemnation of Russian actions, saying the war was “not a cowboy film with goodies and baddies.”
His comments last month in an interview with Swiss broadcaster RTS proved incendiary in Ukraine.
“I think whoever sees the situation, thinks about the population and has the courage of the white flag is stronger,” the pope said.
“You see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, have the courage to negotiate,” he said.
Then-Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs Dmytro Kuleba slammed the comments.
“Our flag is a yellow and blue one. This is the flag by which we live, die and prevail. We shall never raise any other flags,” Kuleba said.
He also referred to historical accusations of inaction by the Catholic Church against Nazi Germany.
“When it comes to the white flag, we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century,” he said, urging the Holy See to “avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS