Some months ago, I wrote on this site a column that highlighted the impact of the Russian invasion on the Eastern-Rite Catholics of beleaguered Ukraine. I pointed out that in the past, Russian expansion into Ukraine and the Carpathian Mountains badly damaged the churches of these rites.
This past week the pope not only drew attention to their plight but, in so doing, actually intensified the suffering of all Ukrainian people. In a Swiss television interview (which will be released in full on March 20), Francis called for Ukraine to have “the courage of the white flag,” a comment that struck many Ukrainians (and Catholics elsewhere) as a call for their surrender to end a war which has meant thousands of combat and civilian deaths, to say nothing of the widespread destruction of towns and villages.
Though the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, along with the Vatican press office have engaged in damage control – claiming that what the pontiff intended to say was that it was time to have the courage to negotiate – the impression remained that Francis had carelessly employed a symbol of surrender, which given the death and destruction perpetrated by Russia, appeared deeply offensive.
Ukrainian Catholic leaders, for example, quickly responded to the pope’s remarks. The Permanent Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) firmly protested saying that “Ukrainians won’t surrender because surrender means death,” something anyone who has been watching the news the past two years would have known well.
The synod went on to say that Russia’s wicked intentions are clear and that “70 percent of the Russian population support the genocidal war against Ukraine as does Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church.” In his younger days, Kirill was an asset. if not an outright agent, of the KGB.
As I pointed out in my earlier article, the synod also recalled that:
every Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory leads to the eradication of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, any independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church [to which most church-affiliated Ukrainians belong], and to the suppression of other religions and all institutions and cultural expression that do not support Russian hegemony.
The UGCC also invoked the 1994 Budapest agreement wherein Russia promised to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity in return for Ukraine’s abandonment of its old Soviet nuclear arsenal. Why then, should anyone trust the Russians now?
The pope’s invocation of a white flag deeply offends a people who well know what subjection to the Russians means. Both the Tsarist and the Soviet regimes persecuted the Eastern-Rite churches. The Bolsheviks sent numerous Eastern-Rite priests to the Gulag to suffer and die. The property of those churches was confiscated, so that what was left of the parishes was impoverished. The churches survived largely by going underground, only to resurface in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Parolin also said that as the unjust aggressor in this war, the responsibility for negotiations lies mostly with Russia. Which raises the question: If the pope agrees, why did he not mention that in his interview?
In the past, the pope has stated that the Catholic churches of the Eastern Rites are an outdated channel for the Orthodox churches of, say, Russia or Greece, to be reunited with Rome. Eastern Catholics, of course, did not appreciate being characterized as a kind of obsolete form.
Francis’s careless comment about a white flag has only served to further alienate Ukrainian Catholics from Rome. Just last week, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt (a Monophysite church, not in full communion with Rome) announced its withdrawal from ecumenical talks with the pope because of Fiducia supplicans, Cardinal Fernández’s curious call for the blessing of same-sex couples.
The Egyptian bishops regretfully pointed out that such blessings essentially contradict teachings about sexuality that may be found in the Old and New Testaments, and accused Rome of inventing new teachings, which troubles Eastern Christians to no small extent. This pontificate has now badly damaged sixty years of ecumenical progress.
At a Mass for Ukraine, sponsored by Aid to the Church in Need, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk preached at St Patrick’s in New York City last Sunday. He said:
We are loved by God, and no enemy can overcome us. We have experienced this during these two years – mutual love, care and protection. Thank you for expressing this love through your prayer, action and sacrifice. Let’s not give up! Hold your checkpoints. Don’t let the devil or enemy propaganda capture your heart, but pray and work, as his Beatitude Lubomyr Husar commanded us. God’s truth will win: Ukraine will win. Do not doubt it!
His Beatitude hardly sounds like the leader of a beaten country. Rather, he speaks with the righteousness of the ancient prophets. He has tried mightily to give his people hope amid the loss of sons and fathers, the destruction of homes, villages and towns, the separation of loved ones, and the fear that they will never be reunited.
Would that “the pope of mercy” had done likewise.
