To understand the strife besetting Ukraine, one must understand that the state whose existence is now threatened by Vladimir Putin's Russia has never been truly united in matters of language, culture and even religion. The country is into western and eastern halves, more or less along the Dnieper River, which runs through Kiev, the capital.
The eastern part of Ukraine has over the centuries become more and more "Russified". That was official policy during the Soviet times, when the use of the Ukrainian language was suppressed in favour of Russian, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was subsumed into the Russian Orthodox Church.
The geographical division of Ukraine is reflected in the country's division by religion. The people of eastern Ukraine are predominantly Orthodox, members of one of the several autocephalous schismatic Orthodox churches of eastern Europe and the Middle East. Most Western Ukrainians, however, are Catholic. That doesn't mean they are all Roman Catholics. Most belong to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, of the Byzantine rite.
The Ukrainian Catholic Church, like the many other Eastern Churches, is in union with Rome -- thus part of the Catholic (i.e. Universal) Church -- and acknowledges the Pope as head of the Church. So you would expect the Pope to be more than a little concerned about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which targets the Ukrainian Church as the great protector of Ukrainian culture and independence. You would be wrong.
On February 20th, Pope Francis held separate audiences for the Ukrainian bishops of the Roman rite and those of the Byzantine rite, at the end of which all of the bishops received a written statement expressing the Pope's solidarity with the people affected by continued violence in Ukraine. Francis lamented the conflict that "continues to claim many innocent victims and to cause great suffering to the entire population." However, breaking from his prepared text, he said that he is pained by calls for the defeat of rebels or a victory for Ukrainian independence!
You might wonder, when the Pope deliberately stops short of condemning Russian-backed separatists, whose side he's on! Is he, too, so scared of Putin that he is afraid even to say a few words against the Russian tyrant? Walt is reminded of Josef Stalin's sarcastic remark to French Foreign Minister Pierre Laval, in May 1935, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm. In reply to Laval's suggestion that the Soviet Union should encourage Catholicism in order to propitiate the Pope and get the Church onside against the Nazis, Stalin is supposed to have said "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?"
Indeed the Pope has no army, and these days he does not even have the force of suasion, since no-one other than the kumbaya liberals and secular humanists pays any attention to the ramblings of an old man whose cheese is obviously slipping off his cracker. But still, could he not at least say a few words in support of the good Catholics of the Ukraine who look to him for leadership, but in vain.
The same thought was expressed [better! Ed.] on the day of the Pope's meeting with the Ukrainian bishops by noted Vaticanista Sandro Magister, in "Assaulted by Moscow and Abandoned by Rome". Here is the first part of Sig. Magister's article. The emphasis is mine.
He had a lot to be sorry about, Pope Francis, with the bishops of Ukraine who recently arrived in Rome for their periodic ad limina visit.
To these bishops and to their priests and faithful, when two weeks ago Jorge Mario Bergoglio had denounced to the world the war that is devastating their country, the words he had used had sounded terrible. "Fratricidal violence", the pope had called it, putting everyone on a par, aggressors and victims.
And it had been even worse when Francis had looked up from the text and added on his own, "When I hear the words ‘victory’ or ‘defeat’ I feel a great pain, a great sadness in my heart. Those are not the right word; the only right word is ‘peace.’ Think about it, this is a war among Christians! All of you have the same baptism. You are fighting among Christians. Think about this scandal."
The fact that Bergoglio has a soft spot for Russia had already been seen with the outbreak of war in Syria, when he called for a day of prayer and fasting to oppose the armed intervention of the United States and France against the regime of Damascus, and Vladimir Putin publicly praised him.
Then there is the influence of the ecumenical factor. Of the 200 million Orthodox Christians in the world, 150 million belong to the patriarchate of Moscow and "of all Rus’", and it is therefore with Moscow above all that the pope wants to cultivate good relations.
But the fact that the aggression of Russia against Ukraine, the armed occupation of its eastern border, the annexation of Crimea should have left the pope indifferent to "victory" or "defeat", was intolerable for the sentiments of Ukrainian Catholics. All the more so in that these words of Pope Francis promptly brought the applause of Moscow, this time not from Putin but from Orthodox patriarch Kirill, who also has jurisdiction over the Orthodox of Ukraine.
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