ROME — Pope Francis said Wednesday that the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine demonstrate the “impotence” of the United Nations to curb violence and protect the innocent.

“Today we often hear about ‘geopolitics,’” the pontiff told the crowd gathered for his weekly general audience in the Vatican. “But unfortunately, the dominant logic are the strategies of the most powerful countries to affirm their own interests, extending their area of economic influence, or ideological influence, and/or military influence.”

“We are seeing this with the war,” Francis continued, while decrying “the colonization of the most powerful” over their weaker neighbors.

Referring to his recent trip to Malta, the pope said that the island nation “represents the rights and power of the ‘small’ nations, small but rich in history and civilization, that should lead toward another logic – that of respect and freedom – the logic of respect and also the logic of freedom, of the coexistence of differences.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres dines during his visit of the Sikh Shrine of Baba Guru Nanak Dev at Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur near the Pakistan-India border, on February 18, 2020. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images)

“We are seeing this now,” he said. “And not only from one side: even from others…”

“After World War II, the attempt was made to lay the foundations of a new era of peace,” he said, with a nod to the formation of the United Nations and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “But, unfortunately – we never learn, right? – the old story of competition between the greater powers went on.”

“And, in the current war in Ukraine, we are witnessing the impotence of the Organizations of the United Nations,” he said.

At the end of the audience, Francis kissed a Ukrainian flag that was brought to him from Bucha while repeating his call for an end to the war.

“This flag comes from the war, from that martyred city Bucha. Let us not forget them. Let us not forget the people of Ukraine,” he said.