{"id":23427,"date":"2022-06-14T12:17:52","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T12:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=23427"},"modified":"2022-06-14T12:17:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T12:17:52","slug":"pope-francis-says-ukraine-war-was-perhaps-somehow-provoked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/06\/14\/pope-francis-says-ukraine-war-was-perhaps-somehow-provoked\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis says Ukraine war was \u2018perhaps somehow provoked\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pope Francis has said Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was \u201cperhaps somehow provoked\u201d as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned Nato was \u201cbarking at the gates of Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica, conducted last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff condemned the \u201cferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops\u201d while warning against what he said was a fairytale perception of the conflict as good versus evil.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one,\u201d he said. \u201cSomething global is emerging and the elements are very much entwined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Francis added that a couple of months before the war he met a head of state, who he did not identify but described as \u201ca wise man who speaks little, a very wise man indeed \u2026 He told me that he was very worried about how Nato was moving. I asked him why, and he replied: \u2018They are barking at the gates of Russia. They don\u2019t understand that the Russians are imperial and can\u2019t have any foreign power getting close to them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was, perhaps, somehow either provoked or not prevented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly before the invasion,\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0had demanded Nato rule out allowing Ukraine, which borders Russia, into the military alliance.<\/p>\n

The pope said he was not \u201cpro-Putin\u201d and that it would be \u201csimplistic and wrong to say such a thing\u201d. He also said Russia had \u201cmiscalculated\u201d the war. \u201cIt is also true that the Russians thought it would all be over in a week. They encountered a brave people, a people who are struggling to survive and who have a history of struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning, the pontiff published a message saying the invasion of\u00a0Ukraine\u00a0was a violation of a country\u2019s right to self-determination.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war in Ukraine has now been added to the regional wars that for years have taken a heavy toll of death and destruction,\u201d he said in a message for the Roman Catholic church\u2019s World Day of the Poor, which will be marked in November. \u201cYet here the situation is even more complex due to the direct intervention of a \u2018superpower\u2019 aimed at imposing its own will in violation of the principle of the self-determination of peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he told La Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica that he hoped to meet the Russian Orthodox patriarch, Kirill, a close ally of Putin who supports the war in Ukraine, at an interreligious event in Kazakhstan in September.<\/p>\n

Kirill scolded Francis after the pontiff urged him not to become the Kremlin\u2019s \u201caltar boy\u201d in an interview with the Corriere della Sera newspaper. Kirill accused the pope of choosing an \u201cincorrect tone\u201d to convey his message, adding that such remarks would damage dialogue between the two churches.<\/p>\n

The pair had been due to meet in Jerusalem in June but the trip was cancelled due to the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pope Francis has said Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine was \u201cperhaps somehow provoked\u201d as he recalled a conversation in the run-up to the war in which he was warned Nato was \u201cbarking at the gates of Russia\u201d. In an interview with the Jesuit magazine La Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica, conducted last month and published on Tuesday, the pontiff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":23428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11261,6728,6609,6537,5402,10767,8590,5599,7234,8116,11700,11493,5252,6057,1152,10560,7189,5572,5340,4802,11973,9403,10917,7296,1062,4432,71,10897,6833,3457,5217,11233,3852,9178,5180,5521,694,5251,13067,3954,9656,36,594],"class_list":["post-23427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-accused","tag-alliance","tag-catholic","tag-church","tag-churches","tag-conflict","tag-conversation","tag-cruelty","tag-death","tag-destruction","tag-evil","tag-interview","tag-invasion","tag-jerusalem","tag-kremlin","tag-la","tag-la-civilta-cattolica","tag-military","tag-moscow","tag-nato","tag-one","tag-orthodox","tag-poor","tag-pope","tag-pope-francis","tag-pope-francis-of-the-catholic-church","tag-putin","tag-roman","tag-roman-catholic","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-russian-troops","tag-russians","tag-troops","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraine-war","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-war","tag-wars","tag-will","tag-wolf","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}