Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin denies that the pope is taking a pro-Russian stance with his calls for peace. “From the first moment Pope Francis condemned Russian aggression in Ukraine in no uncertain terms, he never put the aggressor and the attacked on an equal footing,” Parolin said in an interview with the geopolitical newspaper Limes.
“I must confess that this simplification scares me a little. Is the Pope pro-Russia because he asks for peace? The Pope is pro-Russia because he supports the arms race and the use of huge sums of money to buy new and increasingly powerful weapons condemned instead of using available funds to fight world hunger and thirst for health, well-being, education and ecological transition?” Parolin asked. “The Pope is close to all the people who suffer the harmful effects of this war, first the civilian victims, then the soldiers and their families, including the mothers of so many young Russian soldiers who have no news of their deaths in their fighting children,” explained the cardinal.
In the war between Russia and Ukraine, as in all conflicts, disarmament is the only adequate and decisive response. “In that sense, it doesn’t seem right to me to ask the aggressor to hand over his weapons,” Parolin said.