Pope Francis is undoubtedly grieved by the carnage in Ukraine. And when the Catholic Church’s chief ecumenical officer, Cardinal Kurt Koch, tells journalists he shares the papal conviction that religious justifications of aggression are “blasphemy” — a wicked use of the things of God — we may be sure that this, too, is Francis’s view of things.
Why, then, should Pope Francis meet with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’, as some personalities and movements in the Church were once urging? Since the invasion of February 24, Kirill has repeatedly deployed religious justifications for Russia’s barbaric assault on Ukraine. Is Kirill not, then, a blasphemer?
Some of those promoting a second Francis/Kirill encounter were likely thinking of the “optics.” Two religious leaders meeting in wartime to pray for peace would, they imagined, vividly demonstrate the Christian capacity to rise above ethnic hatred and national passion in the name of Easter faith and universal moral norms. That, however, was fantasy based on fallacy.
Kirill Gundayev began his ecclesiastical career at the World Council of Churches in a job that would only be given to someone completely trusted by, and likely working with, the KGB, the Soviet secret intelligence service. During his years as Russian Orthodox patriarch, Kirill has promoted an expansive vision of the “Russian world” that falsifies the Christian history of the eastern Slavs and underwrites a revival of czarist and Stalinist imperialism. Kirill is also a mouthpiece in the Russian disinformation campaign proclaiming the tyrant Vladimir Putin as the savior of civilization against Western decadence — a lie that has duped too many Catholics.
A meeting between the current Bishop of Rome and the current Patriarch of Moscow would not have been a meeting of two religious leaders. It would have been a meeting between a religious leader and an instrument of Russian state power.
But, some might have replied, that’s the point. By continuing the personal dialogue with Kirill he opened in Havana in 2016, Francis would have empowered Kirill to have a tempering effect on Putin while positioning the Vatican as honest broker in arranging a negotiated peace in Ukraine.
That, too, is fantasy.
First, in the Putin-Kirill relationship, the patriarch has no real leverage. The tyrant-president does not look to the patriarch for strategic counsel, and he certainly doesn’t look to him for moral correction. He looks to Kirill for support and for cover. Which he gets.
For the sad fact is that its subservience to the state precludes the Russian Orthodox leadership speaking truth to Kremlin power or calling the post-communist czar to conversion. What Kirill and his associates (like his principal ecumenist, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfayev) do provide is a faux-religious justification for Putin’s imperial ambitions, while assuring the Russians who commit horrendous acts of violence against civilians that they are true patriots and sons of the motherland.
Second, the idea of the Vatican as global honest broker is based on a misconception of how the Holy See can exert influence in the 21st-century world. Today’s Vatican is not the early 19th century’s Papal States: a third-tier European power that nonetheless exercised leverage at events like the Congress of Vienna in 1814-1815. The Papal States no longer exist, and neither does the world of Metternich, Castlereigh and Cardinal Ercole Colsalvi, Pope Pius VII’s brilliant and effective secretary of state.
As John Paul II demonstrated, though, the Holy See does have power in today’s world: the power of moral witness, which begins by calling things by their right names. Vatican commentary in the Ukraine war’s second month used a more honest vocabulary than was displayed in the war’s first weeks. Still, as of Easter, the papal and Vatican voice remained more a voice of lamentation than a prophetic voice denouncing aggression and naming the aggressor. That flaw was compounded by imprudent words suggesting that no wars are ever morally legitimate, which is not true of Ukraine’s defense of its territory, and of the cultural and political transformation of the country that began with the Maidan Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv in 2013-2014.
By the wanton slaughter of innocents in Bucha, in Mariupol’, and throughout Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has stigmatized himself with the mark of Cain. Kirill has tried to mask that stigma. For the Bishop of Rome to have met with Kirill as if the Russian were a true religious leader would have bitterly disappointed Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians, who would not unreasonably have regarded it as a betrayal; it would have depleted the Holy See’s moral capital in world affairs; and it would have contributed nothing to peace.
The above comes from an April 27 story by George Weigel in Catholic World Report.
A weakness of Orthodox Churches (and the Catholic Church in different places in different times in history) has been allowing themselves to become too closely allied with, in some cases even virtually under the control of, their respective governments. The relative independence of the Catholic Church is widely respected, even if feared, by some governments. The Soviets and their puppets demanded that the Eastern Catholics living under their control either renounce Christ or join the Orthodox Church. Our martyrs bear witness to fidelity to Christ and His Church. (That is one of the reasons why the secret agreement McCarrick made for the Vatican with the Communist Chinese government, allowing them to choose bishops, is incomprehensible to me.) Rome is Rome and Constantinople is Constantinople. But, Moscow is not the Third Rome, as it sometimes claims to be.
It was refreshing to see the Pope’s honest assessment when, earlier this month, he said, “In the current war in Ukraine, we are witnessing the impotence of the United Nations Organization.”
For the peace of the whole world, for the welfare of the Holy Churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord.
THat’s why so many movies show Eastern European terrorists being devoutly Orthodox and getting their cell activated through code embedded in an Orthodox liturgy.
Hmmm…. I’ve never heard that. Since we Eastern Catholics also use the same Divine Liturgies (those of St. John Chrysostom, Saint Basil the Great and a few others) and they don’t change, I can’t imagine how some secret code could be embedded in our Liturgies. They’re written texts going back to the 4th and 6th centuries with only very minor modifications since (and those are noticed and public and only after broad consultation with bishops, linguists and others and, of course, approval by the bishops). I’m not concerned that chanting Divine Liturgy tomorrow (or even our Orthodox neighbors up the street) will activate a sleeper cell. I think the Russians (and others) have other ways of communicating with terrorists than through Divine services. Before I retired from my secular vocation a couple years ago, I received updates from the joint anti-terrorism task force and never saw anything like that. Some things in our services may seem like secret code to some, but they’re not. “Hospodi, pomiluj.” “Господи, помилуй.”
In the movie Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit the terrorists are activated at an orthodox church. They realize they’ve been activated when a particular reading is proclaimed.
Jack, we have a one-year lectionary cycle. So, they get activated every year? At least after our readings were chanted this morning, nothing that I know of happened (I mean, nothing criminal). Although I did notice a couple of bearded men milling around the coffee urn after… And, neither were me. Please feel free to join us any Sunday morning and signal me if that particular reading is proclaimed. The pastor and I are certainly willing to shorten our homily in the interest of public safety.
Lord have mercy
Kirill is KGB (now FSB), code name “Mikhailov.”
Ukraine has a large Nazi contingent in its military. Ukraine has killed 14K people in its autonomy declaring eastern provinces. NATO destroyed the most prosperous African nation, (Libya) for not playing ball with Internationalist banks and was posed to do the same in Syria. We are responsible for the Christian genocide in Middle East, We created ISIS, per just one example. White people attacked and we freak, brown/black, big MEH.
Jay, can you provide references for Ukraine having “a large Nazi contingent in its military” and killing !4,000 of its citizens? Thank you.
If not, it seems you’re an anonymous apologist, not for the Russian people, but for the war criminal Putin.
And, I’m pretty certain all readers here oppose mass killings, whether the perpetrator is killing Asians (like Pol Pot or Mao) or Europeans (like Putin, Stalin and Hitler) or Blacks (like Idi Amin) or “browns” (as you call them, like Fidel Castro). Not every issue is about race. All are part of the one human race, the one human family.
corrected: Curious, you missed, completely, the point that you say is about race. We in the West care not about victims of even our own perpetrations if they live outside of the EU/USA sphere. That is just a fact based on what stories get covered and which are ignored. And we are just being fed the same globalist generated lies re: Ukraine. Do a deeper dive. The 14K figure is well documented, the Nazi idea is acknowledged by Zelinsky himself.
Again, can you provide a reference?
Did you read it somewhere? If so, where?
Thank you.
So, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, but promoting Naziism? Is that what you’re saying?
Like “Catholics For Choice,” is he a member of “Jews for Shoah (Holocaust)?”
Mr. Bill points to Oliver Stone and The Remnant. Though far left and far right, neither are credible as far as their journalism goes.
Some have said that if you go far enough left and far enough right, you end up in the same place.
Interestingly, the Babylon Bee has reported that Nazis are everywhere:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFNCsSBnYVg
So, no need to worry about Putin, the Communist Chinese, Antifa, North Korea, Iran or Islamic terrorists. It’s those ubiquitous Nazis that Putin is saving the world from.