Pope Francis has once again irritated the authorities in Kyiv. This time, for having improvised part of a speech, on Friday, in front of young Catholics gathered in Saint Petersburg. The Pontiff read a prepared text in Spanish, but at the end he formulated some words in Italian that have not gone down well in Ukraine after telling young Russians that they are the heirs of tsars like Peter the Great, who invaded part of Sweden and of Finland, and with whom Vladimir Putin has compared himself to justify the offensive in Ukraine.
"Don't forget the inheritance. You are the heirs of Great Russia: the Great Russia of the saints, of the kings, the Great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, that great Russian empire, cultured, of so much culture, of so much humanity - the Argentine Pope maintained. Do not give up this inheritance. You are the heirs of Great Mother Russia, go ahead”. And he added: "Thank you. Thank you for your way of being, for your way of being Russian”.
The Vatican sent the official transcript of the pope's speech on Saturday, but did not include that last paragraph, which was later released by the Catholic diocese of Moscow and in a video by a Russian Catholic agency.
In a statement this Tuesday, the spokesman of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, clarified that the Pontiff "intended to encourage young people to preserve and promote what is positive in the great Russian cultural and spiritual heritage", and not to exalt logics imperialists and government figures, mentioned to indicate some historical periods of reference. Previously, the Vatican embassy in Kyiv had already rejected that it supported imperialism. "On the contrary, he is a firm opponent and critic of any type of imperialism or colonialism", he stressed.
However, Bergoglio's impromptu speech has generated enormous unease in Kyiv. The spokesman of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oleg Nikolenko, lamented in a message published on Facebook that it is "precisely with this imperialist propaganda, spiritual ties and the need to save Great Mother Russia that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and towns”. "It is unfortunate that the ideas of the great Russian power, which in fact contribute to Russia's chronic aggression, knowingly or unknowingly, come from the mouth of the Pope, whose mission, in our opinion, is precisely to open the eyes of young Russians against the disastrous course of the current Russian leadership," Nikolenko added.
Also the great archbishop of Kyiv and primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, stated that the words of Francis have caused enormous pain in the hierarchy of the Church and great disappointment in the Ukrainian civil society, since the empire evoked was "the worst example of imperialism and extreme Russian nationalism".
Criticism has gone beyond Ukraine. The former president of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves, whose country was also conquered under Peter the Great, posted on X – the old Twitter – that the statements were “repulsive”.
On the contrary, the Kremlin was delighted with the speech of the Argentine pope. His spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said yesterday that "the Pontiff knows Russian history and that is very good". “It has deep roots and our heritage is not limited to Peter (the Great) or Catherine; it is much older", he said. "What the Russian state, activist groups, schools and university professors are doing now is to bring this heritage to our young people - he continued -. And that the Pontiff is in unison with these efforts is very, very gratifying."
It is not the first time that Francis has been criticized for a speech about Russia. Despite the fact that he has repeatedly condemned Russian atrocities in Ukraine – he has even compared them to crimes during the Soviet period – and constantly speaks of “martyred Ukraine”, he already provoked the anger of Kyiv when he spoke of the assassination with the car bomb of Daria Duguina, daughter of Aleksandr Duguin, ideologue of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as another "innocent victim" of the war.
The Jesuit Pope has commissioned Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, to carry out a peace mission to mediate in Ukraine, although neither Kyiv nor Moscow have shown much interest in this Vatican diplomatic effort. Francis also had an audience with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May, who asked him to condemn Russian crimes and join his peace plan.
