ROME—Pope Francis praised 18th-century Russian emperors whom President Vladimir Putin has invoked as models for his territorial annexations in Ukraine, in the pontiff’s latest controversial statement relevant to the war.
On Friday, speaking by video to a gathering of Russian Catholic youth in St. Petersburg, Pope Francis urged them to follow in the path of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, whom he called rulers of a “great, enlightened empire of great culture and great humanity.”
The comments on Peter and Catherine, which came at the end of the pope’s speech, weren’t included in the official transcript released by the Vatican, but were released by the Catholic diocese of Moscow and later in a video from Siberian Catholic television, a church agency.
Putin has cited Peter, who expanded Russian territory and curtailed Ukrainian autonomy, to justify the current invasion. Putin has used the term Novorossiya, or New Russia, for Russian-occupied southern Ukraine—using a term that dates back to Russia’s conquest of southern Ukraine under Catherine in 1764.
Catherine also harbored the Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, during the order’s suppression by Rome in the late 18th and early 19th century.
The Ukrainian government declined to comment, but the pope’s remarks drew angry reactions on social media, especially in countries near Russia. Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves called the comments “truly revolting” on X, formerly known as Twitter. Nexta, a Belarusian media outlet based in Warsaw, Poland, posted on the same platform: “By the way, the Catholics of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus raised uprisings three times against this ‘enlightened empire’.”
In a statement released on Monday afternoon, the Vatican’s embassy to Kyiv rejected suggestions that “Pope Francis might have encouraged young Russian Catholics to draw inspiration from historical Russian figures known for imperialistic and expansionist ideas and actions that negatively impacted neighboring populations, including the Ukrainian people.”
“Pope Francis has never endorsed imperialistic notions. On the contrary, he is a staunch opponent and critic of any form of imperialism or colonialism across all peoples and situations,” the statement said.
Pope Francis has frequently decried Ukrainian suffering since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, but he has refrained from explicitly condemning Moscow for the war, while suggesting it may have been provoked by the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe’s east. The pope’s stance has drawn criticism from Ukrainians including leaders of the Catholic Church there.
The pope has repeatedly cast the war in Ukraine as a struggle between the Russian and U.S. superpowers, with Ukraine as a victim caught in the middle. “There are imperial interests at stake, not just the Russian empire, which has been around since Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, but the other empires too. There are these empires. And empires put nations in second place,” the pope said in a March interview with Swiss public television.
The Vatican has offered to broker a peace agreement in Ukraine, and Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi has traveled to Kyiv, Moscow and Washington as the pope’s envoy in pursuit of that mission. But neither Ukraine or Russia has shown interest in mediation.
In May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met the pope in Rome and called on him to support Kyiv’s formula for peace, based on the withdrawal of Russia’s invasion forces, the restoration of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory, war-crimes prosecutions and reparations.
Countries' decisions in how they defend themselves is self-determination in internal affairs.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is unmasked aggression outside of their borders without provocation.
Equating the two is wrong. Full stop.
NATO is only designed to kick into action in the event of attacks on member countries. It is a defensive treaty organization. If Russia wasn't being a bunch of dickholes, they'd have nothing to worry about from NATO.
I'm a Russian.
Even if NATO has aggression in mind, that doesn't justify current war. There's hypothetical aggression / geopolitical threat and there's real one.
Current war brings nothing, but a shame and death and is throwing both countries under the bus - all for some delusions of old ex-KGB maniac.
Does sharing these views put you in danger?
Probably. It's not wise of me, but sometimes I could not contain myself because being sick of it all for too long.
The thing is 99% of the time NATO doesn't do anything. They essentially can be considered to only effectively exist every time Russia gets upset about them existing. But for the individual members they're essentially a non-organization most of the time.
I also think it's funny that the current machinations have encouraged NATO to expand, the precise opposite of what the war was theoretically supposed to achieve.
Are you a Welsh Russian?
What does it mean? It's because I'm being awkward with English in some specific way?
It's because Llewellyn is a Welsh name.
Oh, I just love Welsh culture 😁
It's always easier to blame NATO than to accept Russia is actually aggressive. Because if you say that Russia are wrong then they go completely ballistic (although admittedly they are doing anyway so I'm not sure what the difference would be), but when you accuse NATO random bullshit, it's just a random Tuesday.
And it's not like the Pope is exactly a well plugged in individual. He's the Pope, having stupid takes on political situations he knows next to nothing about, is practically in the job description.