Pope Francis is ready to go to Moscow. Since the first day of the war in Ukraine, when Russia invaded the country, his appeal to the warlords was: “Stop”. To the journalists of the Courier which he received in the living room of the Holy See he repeated once again, summarizing the attempts made so far to obtain a ceasefire.
“On the first day of the war, I called Ukrainian President Zelensky on the phone. Putin, on the other hand, I didn’t call him, ”he says. “I heard it in December for my birthday but this time no, I didn’t call. I wanted to make a clear gesture for the whole world to see and for this I went to the Russian ambassador. I asked them to explain, I said “please stop”. Then I asked Cardinal Parolin (the Secretary of State of the Holy See), after twenty days of war, to send Putin the message that I was willing to go to Moscow. Of course, it was necessary for the Kremlin leader to allow some windows ». Pope Francis has not yet received an answer «and we are still insisting, even if I fear that Putin cannot and does not want to have this meeting right now. But so much brutality how can you not stop it? Twenty-five years ago we experienced the same thing with Rwanda ».
Pope francesco he also tried to dialogue with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. But he got nothing. “I talked to him for 40 minutes via zoom. The first twenty with a card in hand he read me all the justifications for the war. I listened and told him: I don’t understand anything about this. Brother, we are not clerics of state, we cannot use the language of politics, but that of Jesus. We are shepherds of the same holy people of God. For this we must seek ways of peace, to put an end to the firing of weapons. The Patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin’s altar boy. I had an scheduled meeting with him in Jerusalem on June 14th. It would be our second face to face, nothing to do with the war. But now he too agrees: let’s stop, it could be an ambiguous signal ».
On the thorny question of the supply of arms to Ukraine, the Pontiff remains doubtful: «I cannot answer, I am too far away, to the question of whether it is right to supply the Ukrainians. The clear thing is that weapons are being tested in that land. The Russians now know that tanks are of little use and are thinking of other things. Wars are fought for this: to test the weapons we have produced. This was the case in the Spanish Civil War before the Second World War. The arms trade is a scandal, few oppose it. Two or three years ago a ship loaded with weapons arrived in Genoa which had to be transferred to a large freighter to transport them to Yemen. The port workers did not want to do it. They said: let’s think of the children of Yemen. It’s a small thing, but a nice gesture. There should be so many like that. “
Source: Vanity Fair
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