After Pope Francis told young Russian Catholics they were heirs of “the great, educated Russian Empire,” Ukraine’s bishops told him that some of his statements were “painful and difficult for the Ukrainian people” and are used by Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine.
“Misunderstandings that have arisen between Ukraine and the Vatican since the beginning of the full-scale war, the bishops explained, are used by Russian propaganda to justify and support the murderous ideology of the ‘Russian World,'” said a statement released by the Ukrainian bishops on 6th September after their two-hour meeting with the pope at the Vatican.
Pope Francis told the bishops that he had explained his remarks to reporters on 6th September during his return flight to Rome from Mongolia and said he had explained his understanding of the “pain” that occurs when a nation’s cultural heritage is “distilled and manipulated by a certain state power, and as a result turns into an ideology that destroys and kills,” the statement said.
“I want to assure you of my solidarity with you and constant prayerful closeness. I am with the Ukrainian people,” he told the bishops.
Picture: Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of Kyiv-Halych and head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, gives Pope Francis a cross, prayer book and rosary belonging to two Redemptorist priests detained in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory in November 2022 and believed to still be in Russian custody during a meeting of the Eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic bishops’ synod in a meeting room in the Vatican audience hall on 6th September 2023. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)