Pope Francis rejects the Western narrative on the Ukrainian conflict, writes Il Fatto Quotidiano. The author of the article notes that despite pressure from Kiev, the pontiff refuses to consider Ukraine an innocent victim and Putin a devil in the flesh, as the EU and NATO demand.
The government in Kiev continues to put pressure on the Vatican. Ukrainian President Zelensky would like the pontiff to come to Kiev, and preferably before his visit to Kazakhstan, which will take place on 13 September. Pope Francis has not made a decision yet. He would prefer to visit both Kiev and Moscow to encourage the sides to negotiate peace. This behind-the-scenes arm-wrestling has been going on for months now. The Pope is very clear and expresses solidarity with the Ukrainians. He has condemned Russia’s actions and instructed cardinals to deliver humanitarian aid and express regret to the Ukrainian people.
However, the Argentine pontiff is not adhering to Zelensky’s political line. Pope Francis has told Patriarch Kirill that he must not be a “servant of Putin”, but he himself resolutely refuses to be a “servant of the West”. And he stated this clearly in the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. The Vatican believes that Zelensky wants to drag the pope into a narrative that presents Ukraine solely as a victim, Putin as the devil in the flesh and Russia as a state that must be brought to the point where it can never again repeat a military campaign like the one that began on February 24 (as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said).
This is the narrative being promoted in NATO and EU capitals. And it excludes any analysis of the “antecedents”, i.e. the geopolitical changes that led to the conflict. It also excludes any reflection on the consequences of an all-out war with a possible nuclear strike for Europe, Asia and the rest of the world.
Pope Francis does not share such an approach. He is going against the tide, as are a large number of countries that make up the majority of the world’s population and do not want to side with Russia or the West. Because for them, a narrative that presents an international tragedy as a western in which the sheriff and his deputies have to take down a gang of villains sounds unconvincing.
What is happening is a conflict between the West and Russia, and that is how it should be treated. The Pope explicitly stated in June that the “Little Red Riding Hood scheme” should be set aside. It is useless to pretend that NATO did not expand in the decades following the collapse of the USSR and pull the military-political bloc closer to Russia’s borders. There is no point in hiding the fact that Washington under George W. Bush wanted to include Ukraine in NATO. Those were the years when the US believed so blindly in its omnipotence that it thought it could invade Afghanistan and Iraq at the same time. In 2008, Ukraine’s accession to the alliance was blocked by France and Angela Merkel’s Germany, which still believes it did the right thing by saying no. However, this has not cooled the expansionist fervour. As Pope Francis said, the West has begun to “bark at Russia’s gate”. They have forgotten Henry Kissinger’s admonition that Ukraine must remain a neutral zone between Russia and the West. As a result, Russia has been geopolitically “encircled and humiliated”, as historian Andrea Riccardi said from the start.
The Vatican sees the full picture of what is happening, both historically and geopolitically.
The sabotage of the Ukrainians on Russian territory (time will tell if the murder of Russian ideologue Dugin’s daughter can be attributed to them) does not escape the Vatican’s notice. Their aim seems to be to provoke Russia to make the wrong move and draw NATO directly into the conflict.
After his last phone call with Pope Francis, the Ukrainian president tweeted, “Our nation needs the support of world spiritual leaders who could bring the truth about the aggressor’s terrible actions in Ukraine to the world.” This tweet shows perfectly that Pope Francis and Kiev politics are on opposite sides. The Vatican does not like the pontiff being told what to do and the fact that the Ukrainian authorities censored a TV broadcast of the papal procession because it expressed the idea of peace between Ukrainians and Russians.
Ultimately the pope will decide for himself how and when to act. But he still adheres to the idea that the time has come for a new world order that suits everyone.