(CNN) Ukrainian officials criticized Pope Francis’ speech to young Russians Friday, calling it “imperialist propaganda.”
Pope Francis delivered a video address to the Association of Catholic Youth in Russia in St. Petersburg, during which he urged them to consider themselves “descendants of the Russian Empire.”
And he said: “Never forget your heritage, you are the descendants of Great Russia: Great Russia of saints and rulers, Great Russia of Peter I, and Catherine II, that educated empire, great culture, and great humanity, never abandon this heritage, you are descendants of Great Mother Russia, Move them forward.”
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko, on Facebook Monday, described the pope’s speech as “imperialist propaganda.” Nikolenko added: “This is the kind of imperialist propaganda, spiritual ties and the need to save Great Mother Russia that the Kremlin uses to justify killing thousands of Ukrainians and destroying hundreds of towns and villages.” Ukrainian”.
He continued, “The Pope’s task should be to open the eyes of Russian youth to the destructive path of the current Russian leadership, and instead he is promoting the ideas of the Russian superpower, which is in fact the reason behind the chronic crisis in Russia’s aggression,” he said.
And last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin compared himself to Peter the Great during an exhibition dedicated to Russia’s first emperor, using the comparison to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Svyatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a statement that Peter the Great and Catherine the Great are “the worst examples of Russian imperialism and extreme nationalism,” warning that the pope’s words “can be seen as support for the nationalism and imperialism that caused the war in Ukraine today.” , according to him.
He added, “As a church, we want to point out that in the context of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, such statements inspire neo-colonial ambitions of the aggressor state.”
On the other hand, the Vatican issued, on Tuesday, a statement refusing to interpret the Pope’s words as “a praise of imperialism.”
“The pope intended to encourage young people to preserve and enhance all that is positive in Great Russian cultural and spirituality, certainly not to glorify imperial logic and government figures, which are cited to refer to certain historical periods of reference,” the Vatican statement read.
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2023-08-30 00:58:17
