Vatican, 18 July, 2023 / 7:47 pm (ACI Africa).
Veteran Vatican diplomat Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher last week defended what he described as Pope Francis’ “strong and courageous” push for peace in Ukraine in the face of criticism from some who have said the Holy Father should take a harder line against Russia as the aggressor in the conflict.
Speaking in Rome at a presentation of the newly released “Ukrainian Lessons” published by the geopolitical magazine Limes, the Vatican secretary for relations with states acknowledged that many Ukrainians have experienced “profound disappointment” at the Holy Father’s statements on Ukraine, L’Osservatore Romano reported.
“What moves the Holy Father is nothing but the will to make dialogue and peace possible,” Gallagher said, “inspired by the principle that ‘the Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus.’”
Francis has often raised the issue of the war, calling it a “negation of God’s dream” and lamenting “the sacrifice of human lives, the suffering of the population, the indiscriminate destruction of civilian structures.”
On occasion, he has sparked criticism from the Ukrainian government. In August of last year, for example, following a car bombing that killed the daughter of an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the pope declared: “The innocent pay for war, the innocent! Let us think about this reality and say to each other: War is madness.”
