Francis also conveyed doubts about the helpfulness of a papal visit to Kyiv after he expressed a willingness to visit the Ukrainian capital during a trip to Malta earlier this month.

Newsroom (24/04/2022 5:25 PM Gaudium Press) In an interview with an Argentine newspaper, Pope Francis said a meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill will no longer take place as planned.

The summit, which would have been the second meeting of the Pope and patriarch, was expected to take place in Jerusalem in June, during the Pope’s June 12 trip to Lebanon.

“I regret that the Vatican has had to cancel a second meeting with Patriarch Kirill,” Pope Francis said in the interview published in La Nacion.

It is enough to mention Ukraine for Pope Francis to clamour: “I am ready to do everything to stop the war. Everything.” His words and gestures convey that there is no other problem, outside or inside the Church, that now concerns him more than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Wars are anachronistic in this world and at this stage of civilization,” he says.

The Pope said his relationship with Kirill is “very good,” but “our diplomacy understood that a meeting of the two of us at this time could cause a lot of confusion.” Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill at Havana’s airport on Feb. 12, 2016, in the first summit between a Pope and a Patriarch of Moscow. Pope Francis has sought to strengthen Catholic-Orthodox ties since his election in 2013.

In the La Nacion interview, the Pope also responded to a question about why he has not named Putin or Russia in his comments on the Ukraine war.

Pope Francis had been criticized for not calling out Russia or President Vladimir Putin by name in his speeches since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

“A Pope never names a head of state, much less a country, which is superior to its head of state,” he argued.

Francis noted the Vatican’s efforts to intervene in the war, “the Vatican never rests. I cannot tell you the details because they would cease to be diplomatic efforts. But the attempts will never stop.”

Francis also conveyed doubts about the helpfulness of a papal visit to Kyiv after he expressed a willingness to visit the Ukrainian capital during a trip to Malta earlier this month.

“I cannot do anything that puts higher objectives at risk, which are the end of the war, a truce or, at least, a humanitarian corridor. What good would it do for the Pope to go to Kyiv if the war continued the next day?” he told the newspaper.

(Via NCR and La Nacional)

Compiled by Raju Hasmukh