“Of all international matters, which the Argentine Pope had to manage during the 12 years of the pontificate, the war started by the Russian invasion of Ukraine was one of the most powerful” – emphasizes “Le Monde”.
He estimates that the Pope's visit on February 25, 2022-the day after the invasion-in the Russian embassy, which was a dissemination with diplomatic customs, was a “awkward” step and the first “from a series of mistakes, errors in assessments and ambiguity” in the Russian-Ukrainian matter.
“Le Monde” reports Franciszek's statements for the media about the war: an interview for “Corriere della Sera” from May 2022, for the “America” magazine published by the Jesuits in December 2022, for Swiss television RSI in March 2024, where he talked about the “white flag” by Ukraine.
The daily estimates that “until May 2022, Francis did not cease to interrupt the fights, refusing to recognize the responsibility of Vladimir Putin and Russia.” He reminds that, when he was in favor of resolving the conflict on the path of dialogue, he spoke about his desire to talk to Putin before going to Kiev, but Putin did not respond to this appeal about mediation.
According to the French political scientist Francois Mabille, Franciszek “was a prisoner of some assumptions, very anti -American, and his hot pacifism”; The Pope excluded all war, even just.
In this respect, he “differed from his predecessors”, including John Paul II, who – according to the expert – considered armed defense as legal, and nuclear deterrence as “morally permissible as a stage on the road to disarmament”. Francis condemned the “possession” of nuclear weapons, “he wanted to avoid the use of weapons at all costs and insisted on the constant possibility of dialogue, even with authoritarian powers” – reminds Mabille.
“This obsession of dialogue sometimes led him to a bad assessment of not only the situation, but also people,” says “Le Monde”, citing the opinion of a diplomat working in Rome. This interlocutor said that Pope Francis “did not understand well, and what Putin reacts to and was wrong in the case of Patriarch Cyril, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which he thought that he would help him end the war.”
As “Le Monde” notes, “Over time, the Pope's Gorry desire to mediate so many walls for peace that the Vatican decided to focus on the humanitarian dimension.”
