Pope Francis leads the Angelus prayer from his window at the Vatican, on Sunday, August 27, 2023. Vatican Media/Reuters
Ukrainian officials have criticized Pope Francis’ address to Russian youth, calling it “imperialist propaganda.”
The pontiff made a video address to the 10th All-Russian Catholic Youth Assembly in St. Petersburg on Friday during which he urged them to view themselves as descendants of the Russian empire.
“Never forget your heritage. You are the descendants of great Russia: the great Russia of saints, rulers, the great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire — educated, great culture and great humanity. Never give up on this heritage,” the pope said.
“You are descendants of the great Mother Russia, step forward with it. And thank you — thank you for your way of being, for your way of being Russian.”
On Monday, Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson Oleh Nikolenko called the pope’s speech “imperialist propaganda.”
“This is the kind of imperialist propaganda, ‘spiritual bonds’ and the ‘need’ to save ‘Great Mother Russia’ which the Kremlin uses to justify the murder of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of hundreds of Ukrainian towns and villages,” Nikolenko said in a Facebook post.
The pope’s mission should be “precisely to open the eyes of Russian youth to the devastating course of the current Russian leadership” and instead he is promoting “Russian great-power ideas, that are, in fact, the reason for Russia’s chronic aggression,” Nikolenko said.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin compared himself to Peter the Great during an exhibition dedicated to the first Russian emperor, using the comparison to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a statement that Peter the Great and Catherine the Great are the “worst examples of imperialism and extreme Russian nationalism,” warning that the pope’s words “could be perceived as support for the nationalism and imperialism that has caused the war in Ukraine today.”
“As a Church, we want to state that in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, such statements inspire the neocolonial ambitions of the aggressor country,” Shevchuk said.
On Tuesday, the Vatican rejected the interpretation of the pope’s words as praise of imperialism.
“The Pope intended to encourage young people to preserve and promote all that is positive in the great cultural and Russian spirituality, and certainly not to exalt imperialist logic and government personalities, cited to indicate some historical periods of reference,” the Vatican statement said.
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