Carlo Nicolato April 23, 2022
The new meeting between Pope Bergoglio and the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill it will not happen, at least not the one planned for June in Jerusalem and prepared for some time, long before the war in Ukraine began. At the end of last year, Francis even agreed to meet the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow as well, after which a neutral but highly significant seat was chosen for both, namely Jerusalem. The confrontation should have focused on the issues of Christianity, the discrimination and persecution of believers in the world; Metropolitan Hilarion, a kind of foreign minister of the patriarchate, had ruled out, or at least ruled out, that tensions between states and possible conflicts would be discussed. But the fact remains that in the same period, the Vatican advanced into the Donbass, where the war had never ended since the Crimean times (2014). He had talked about it Paul Richard Gallagher, The English Archbishop and Secretary for Relations with States assured that “it would have been possible to involve the Holy See directly in the negotiations” if the warring parties had asked for it. Zelenskyy had also agreed to meet Wladimir Putin in the Vatican.
Then, far beyond the Donbass, the Russian attack came real and big, and the Pope, in an interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nación, stated that the meeting with Patriarch Kirill “at this moment could cause a lot of confusion”. There is also a question of health, this problem with the ligaments of the knee that prevents him from walking as he should and that requires rest, also because the Pope refuses infiltrations, preferring to limit himself to ice and painkillers: ” It will pass.” he says, “Band healing is slow in this age “.
AGREEMENT OR CONFLICT
But that’s not it. Certainly, Bergoglio clarifies, the meeting was not due to an alleged break with the patriarch because of his strongly nationalist positions, or his very questionable statements that relations between the two are “very good” and certainly not the pope’s intention to do so interrupting the dialogue between the two faiths. “As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, I brought Christians, Jews and Muslims together in fruitful dialogue,” he recalls, an initiative of which he is still proud today. And this “is the same policy that I propagate in the Vatican,” the same policy that “accommodation is always superior to conflict.” Between religions as between states. And if he does not see Kirill, then he either went to Kyiv or will go where Zelensky and all Ukrainians are they awaited him hopefully. “I can’t do anything that jeopardizes higher goals, be it the end of the war, a ceasefire or at least a humanitarian corridor,” Bergoglio replies in an interview, then asks and then asks himself what that would mean for the Pope to go to Kyiv, if the war then continues the next day.
So the truth is, negotiations are underway, and as Archbishop Gallagher had announced in unsuspecting times, the Vatican is also involved: any move one way or the other could be “creating a lot of confusion” right now. According to La Nación, among the high prelates who accompanied the pope to the interview, it is believed that the war, or much of it, could end in early May. “The Vatican never rests,” Bergoglio assures me, “I can’t give you the details because they would cease to be diplomatic efforts. But the attempts will never stop ».
DIPLOMATIC ACTION
He himself, after a sleepless night reflecting on the victims in Ukraine, went alone to the Vatican’s Russian embassy, his only presence to plead with the Russian government to end the war. “I want to do something so that there is not a single death in Ukraine,” adds the Pope, “not one more. and I’m willing to do anything“. Because there is no justification for any death or military attack on a nation. Not even for Russia, which feels threatened by a possible NATO accession of Ukraine? To this question – we remind you that the newspaper is Argentine and the government of Buenos Aires has not joined the sanctions against Russia – the Pope replies succinctly: “All wars are anachronistic for this world and this level of civilization.” There are no reasons, only victims: “That is why I also publicly have the Ukrainian flag It was a gesture of solidarity with their dead, with their families and with those suffering from emigration”.