Dad of surrender

Francis’s statements about the “lost war” and “white flag” provoked protests not only among Ukrainians, but among Catholics and political leaders around the world

On March 9, the Swiss television and radio company RSI published fragments of the “sensational” interview of Pope Francis, the full version of which will be aired on March 20. The pontiff actually called Ukraine the “loser”, urging its leadership to show the “courage of the white flag” and go to immediate negotiations with the Kremlin. Otherwise, Francis hinted, it is Ukraine who will be responsible for new deaths. As an intermediary in such negotiations, the dad proposed Turkey, repeating the old Kremlin narrative: "We need to go to negotiations, until the situation has deteriorated."

For the fourth day, news feeds are filled with outraged reactions to these statements by the pope - both from various kinds of Catholic structures and from world politicians. The head of the Vatican press service of Matteo Bruni is forced to make excuses: “Dad takes the image of the White Flag, proposed by the interviewer, to indicate the termination of hostilities, the truce achieved thanks to the courage of negotiations. He wishes a diplomatic decision. ” But such excuses, obviously, do not convince anyone. After all, if you listen to the rhetoric of Francis of the last two years, you can notice that its current “formula of the world” ripened consistently and consciously.

Stages of ripening

“You are the heirs of the Great Russia: the Great Russia of the Saints, the rulers, the Big Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire - the great, enlightened, great culture and great humanity. Never give up this inheritance, you are the heirs of the great mother of Russia, ”the Roman high priest turned to Russian youth with such an appeal in August last year. This sounded like a front from the pope, who loves to "break stereotypes." He seemed to speak out against the revaluation of the Russian “cultural code”, which occurred in Ukraine and gradually occurs in the west after the nightmares of buch, raisins and Mariupol. These nightmares did not shake the reverse attitude of the current head of the Catholic Church to Russia and to everything Russian. He continues to call his favorite writer Fedor Dostoevsky, and his beloved singer is Muscovite Svetlana Kasyan.

A year earlier, the pope very awkwardly tried to “smash” the Russians from the atrocities, repaired in Ukraine: “The most cruel are, perhaps, natives of Russia, not belonging to the Russian tradition, such as Chechens, Buryats, and so on.” The Vatican had to make official apologies for this chauvinistic statement. In the same row, the papal invitation to the Russians to participate in the “Crown Path” in Rome on a passionate Friday of 2022 or crocodile tears according to Daria Dugina, which Francis called the “innocent victim of the war”.

Of course, he expressed sympathy for the victims among Ukrainians, and condemned the act of aggression. But Francis will go down in the history of his pro -Russian statements, since it is they who distinguish him from the general series of political and moral authorities of the modern West. Usually this phenomenon is explained by the fact that the current dad is not a Western person, moreover, "unsystematic." Before his dad, the dad is 76 years old, Horhe Mario Bergolo lived and served in Argentina - a country with dominant levatian sentiments. As noted by Frankfurter AllGemeine Zeitung, the Argentinean background and became the basis of the pope’s political sympathy for Russia as the main anti -Western force in the world. Bergolo, who took the name of Francis, was not only the first dad from the Western Hemisphere, but also the first Jesuit in the Roman throne. The explosive mixture of Argentine populism and the elaborate Jesuit “spirituality”, multiplied by individual psychological characteristics, led to the fact that even in his 87 years, the dad does not cease to shock both well -intentioned Catholics and the Western establishment with eccentric statements and actions. Sometimes it seems that Francis is specially troll the audience using postmodern techniques.

In Moscow, it seems, also confused whether to consider this a dad as an ally, or to add him to the lists of foreign agents and extremists. On the one hand, the Russian Orthodox community pickets the Catholic churches and scribbles statements to the prosecutor’s office with complaints about the dad signed by the dad about the blessing of homosexuals, on the other hand, Dmitry Peskov promises to “carefully monitor” all the steps of the Vatican for peaceful settlement, and in Moscow they accept the specialdramine of Pope Matteo Dzuppi.

On the first day of full -scale military operations, on February 24, 2022, violating all protocols, Francis personally came to the Russian Embassy under the Holy Thron. “I asked the ambassador to transfer to Putin,” said dad, “that I am ready to go there [to Moscow], provided that he would provide me with a window for negotiations.” Despite the refusal, dad continued to insist that Russia “could provoke” because the insidious NATO “barking at its gate”, and Western assistance to Ukraine only leads to the multiplication of the victims.

So the White Flag Francis imposed “Svo” from the first day, just now, in the third year, he finally said this term.

Despite such a high degree in Moscow, while all peaceful initiatives of the pontiff go to the sand. For two consecutive years, he cannot even achieve short-term Christmas or Easter trucks-so that believers in the front-line zones (and, in general, throughout Ukraine) could calmly, without fear of missile or artillery blows, visit temples for the most important Christian holidays. Such a truce, by the way, was sometimes declared during the “hybrid” phase of the conflict (2014–2021).

The flag of Ukraine is not white

One of the first to the new papal call was reacted to the President of Ukraine. Not mentioning the pope directly, in his evening appeal to the nation on March 10, Vladimir Zelensky thanked the Ukrainian chaplains, fed soldiers at the front line, contrasting them with “virtual intermediaries for two and a half thousand kilometers” from the front. He recalled that the army of the Russian Federation does not go further to Europe only because the army of Ukraine restrains it. Ukrainian patriotic bloggers, commenting on the next “embarrassment” with the dad, suggest that, as the Vatican turns into an unfriendly state, the state of the law on the ban on the ban on Ukrainian religious organizations to have spiritual centers on the territory of the aggressor state can also spread to Catholics. The Ambassador of Ukraine under the Holy Throna Andrei Yurash is still trying to somehow smooth out the situation, promising to explain to Papa that he should not turn to Ukraine, but to Russia: “Ukraine is a victim. This is a state that cannot in any case accept the model of this raising of the “white flag”, because it is for us a question of life and death, our identity. ”

On March 11, the Apostolic Nunius in Kiev Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas was called to the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, where he was expressed an official protest in connection with the statements of the pope. The danger of a papal position, emphasized in the department, is that "legalizes the right of strong and pushes him to a further violation of international law."

Visvaldas Kulbokas was born and received an education in the USSR, worked for many years as a secretary of nunbates (Vatican embassies) in Moscow and even played the role of a translator at the meeting of Pope Francis with Patriarch Kirill (Gundyev) in 2016 in Havana. After his visit to the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, he gave an interview with the Italian La Repubblica, where he tried to shift the guilt to the Swiss interviewer, who threw the pope the image of the white flag. “In order to stop the war,” said Kulbokas, “dad first raises the white flag, in the sense that he invites everyone to the dialogue, because the continuation of bloodshed causes him pain.” He hinted that the “signing of a kind of agreement” would bring to Ukraine fewer victims than the continuation of the war, but immediately made a reservation that this agreement “cannot be surrender”.

On the same day, the All -Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, as it were, in unison with Nuncia assured that "no one will ever force our people to surrender." And according to the bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church , to a certain extent subordinate to the pope, despite the invectives of the pontiff, "Ukrainians will continue to protect freedom and dignity ... They are convinced that the God will really win." German Catholic bishops spoke more straightforwardly: “Ukraine should decide whether time has come for negotiations ... It would be good if the Holy Thron essentially explained its position on these issues.”

The secular politicians of the West, of course, speak out without looking at the church protocol or confessional responsibilities in relation to dad. One of his first position was condemned by the German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbok , recalling that Francis is evading a visit to Kiev, where he was repeatedly invited by the Ukrainian side. The minister noticed that “certain realities cannot be realized until you become an eyewitness. Dad should know such things. ” And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reminded the pontiff that the white flag, that is, surrender, is not a world. According to him, the end of the war depends on the Russian dictator, while Ukraine does not have such a choice. He was supported by the press secretary of the European Union Peter Stano . President of Latvia Ediggs Rinkevich turned in his commentary on the very basics of human morality, pretty deformed in Jesuit casuistry: “You can’t surrender before evil, you need to fight it and win it so that evil raises the white flag and surrender.”

The line, under the such unambiguous reaction of the Western political community, was brought on March 11 by the official representative of the US State Department Meteus Miller , who recalled that this war will end only when Russia stops its attacks and abandon claims to Ukrainian territories. The United States supports the Ukrainian “formula of the world” and the principle of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”, and peace negotiations, according to Miller, will begin only if the aggression and recognition of the sovereignty of Ukraine over all its territories.

The picture of the world of the modern Putin patriot, involved in conspiracy and paranoia, inspired by propaganda, creates certain difficulties in the perception of words.

Some Z-patriots in an incomprehensible way heard the pope in the sense that not Ukraine, but Russia loses in the war, and not Kyiv, but Moscow should raise a white flag.

“If dad wanted to, he would directly call Ukraine the losing side,” writes Kirill Frolov, head of the Association of Orthodox Experts and the speaker of the Union of Orthodox citizens of the Russian Orthodox Church. “Francis is a Jesuit, and this statement is really Jesuit, which allows diametrically opposite interpretations ... It is part of the globalist elite and acts in its interests.” The in agent recognized by the Russian authorities and emigrated from Moscow to Prague Deacon Andrei Kuraev offers an even more cunning reading of the pope’s words: “The White Flag is not only a symbol of surrender and not recognition of himself lost side. The white flag is sometimes raised by the winners. ” He gives an example from the memoirs of the participants in the Second World War, when the Soviet military soldiers went to the German units surrounded by them, thereby waving the white flag.

Ukraine is like Christ

From the very beginning of his pontificate, Francis scared the audience with statements that the Third World War was already coming - though it is yet represented by a series of local wars. If this is true, then it would be logical to initiate the process of building a new architecture of international security, convening scientists and politicians to relevant conferences - on the way to the new World Congress and the new effective global institutions, instead of ineffective UN or OSCE. Dad (so far) does not express intelligible offers of this kind.

According to a professor of theology about. Kirill (Govorun) , the oddities in the statements of the pope are explained by his theological thinking in the categories of the “weak” God - one who “humbled himself, being obedient to death, and death on the cross” (Phil., 2: 8). From the point of view of “this world”, such God, Jesus Christ, surrendered, allowing himself to execute and bury. But he destroyed earthly ideas about the “strong” God with his resurrection, because “the weakness of God is stronger than the people” (1 Cor., 1:25). In this logic, Ukraine is designed to go through Christ - to its resurrection through the visible (but temporary) concession to the forces of evil. The problem of this logic concludes about. Cyril, “is that in the real world, theology of the“ weak ”God can directly lead to its destruction by the“ strong ”god < Actually, the“ Religion of Victory ”preached by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. - approx. aut. >. This is what Francis accuses: that his theological fantasies open the door for the total destruction of Ukrainians. ”