By referencing Moscow’s imperial previous, the pontiff stated that he was encouraging Russians to be happy with their “cultural heritage”
Pope Francis advised reporters on Monday that his reward for “nice Russia” referred to not territorial conquest, however the nation’s “nice cultural heritage.” The pope’s feedback infuriated Ukrainian officers, who known as him an “instrument of Russian propaganda.”
Chatting with reporters as he returned to the Vatican from Mongolia, the pope stated that it “might not have been felicitous” to talk of “nice Russia,” however that he supposed to take action “not in a geographical, however fairly a cultural sense.”
“What I discovered at school got here to thoughts: Peter the Nice, Catherine the Nice,” he defined. “What I wished to speak is to tackle board one’s heritage.”
The pope made the feedback in query throughout a video tackle to 400 younger Russian Catholics in St. Petersburg late final month.
“Don’t forget your heritage,” he implored his viewers. “You might be heirs of the nice Russia – the nice Russia of saints, of kings, the nice Russia of Peter the Nice, Catherine II, the nice, educated Russian Empire of a lot tradition, of a lot humanity. By no means hand over this heritage.”
Mikhail Podoliak, a high aide to Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky, responded by accusing Pope Francis of serving “as an instrument of Russian propaganda.”
Extra criticism got here from Ukrainian International Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko, who wrote on Fb: “It is extremely unlucky that Russian grand-state concepts, that are the reason for Russia’s persistent aggression, knowingly or unknowingly come from the Pope’s mouth.”
Lithuania responded by summoning the Vatican’s envoy, whereas politicians and media retailers throughout the Baltic area and Poland issued livid denunciations of the pontiff. Former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves known as the Pope’s remarks “really revolting” and dubbed the seat of the Roman Catholic Church “the Vatnikan,” utilizing a Ukrainian slur for Russians. The Poland-based outlet Nexta identified that “the Catholics of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus raised uprisings thrice towards this ‘enlightened empire’.”
The Holy See has already tried to downplay the pope’s feedback. “Pope Francis has by no means endorsed imperialistic notions,” the papal embassy in Kiev stated in a press release final week. “Quite the opposite, he’s a staunch opponent and critic of any type of imperialism or colonialism throughout all peoples and conditions.”
You’ll be able to share this story on social media:
Supply hyperlink
