Pope Francis assured that he is willing to travel to Moscow and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. to try to stop the war in Ukraine, which he compared to the one in Rwanda, in Africa.
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“I have to go to Moscow first, I have to meet Putin first.”the pope told the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera in an interview published Tuesday.
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“How can this brutality not stop? Twenty-five years ago, with Rwandawe live the same experience,” the pope added, referring to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the attempted extermination of the Tutsi population by the hegemonic Hutu government, in which some 800,000 people died, according to UN figures.
Francis recalled that “on the first day of the war” he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by phone and repeated several times during the interview that he was ready to go to Moscow.
In December I spoke with him [Putin] for my birthday, but this time I didn’t call. I wanted to make a clear gesture that everyone could see and that is why I addressed the Russian ambassador.
“I asked them to explain to me, I told them to please stop. Then I asked the cardinal [Pietro] Parolin, after twenty days of war, to send a message to Putin that he was willing to go to Moscow,” he stresses.
“We have not yet received a response and we continue to insist, although I am afraid that Putin cannot and does not want to hold this meeting at this time,” he said.
“Even before the pandemic was over, the whole world was faced with a new and tragic challenge: the war in Ukraine,” the pontiff said.
“After the end of World War II there has never been a lack of regional wars, to the point that I have often spoken of a third world war in pieces,” the pontiff told participants in the plenary session of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.
“Nevertheless, this war, as cruel and senseless as any other, has a larger dimension and threatens the entire world and cannot fail to awaken the conscience of every Christian and every Church”, he added.
“What have the Churches done and can they do to contribute to the development of a world community, capable of achieving fraternity from the peoples and nations that live social friendship”, he asked.
The pope, who has condemned the war in Ukraine on numerous occasions, has shown the Vatican’s willingness to “do everything possible” to help achieve a peaceful solution.
Questioning the causes of the conflict, the Catholic leader spoke that the “anger” of the Kremlin had been “facilitated” by “NATO barking at the gates of Russia”, statements that Poland did not like.
“Many of us raised our hands to our heads when we heard what the pope said,” Polish Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek reacted on state television, saying the statements had “offended” Poles.
The pope also discussed the supply of weapons by Western countries to the Ukrainian resistance, an issue that divides the Catholic world.
“I do not know how to answer the question of whether it is correct to supply the Ukrainians, what is clear is that weapons are being tested in that land. The Russians now know that tanks are of little use and are thinking of other things. The wars they are freed for that: to test the weapons we have manufactured,” he said.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE and AFP
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