ROME — The Vatican said Tuesday that Pope Francis has no “political position” on Russia’s war on Ukraine but he condemns it unequivocally.
In response to queries as to where the pope stands on the war, papal spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement that the pontiff’s words “on this dramatic question must be read as a voice raised in defense of human life and the values connected with it, and not as political positions.”
“As for the large-scale war in Ukraine, initiated by the Russian Federation, the interventions of the Holy Father Francis are clear and unambiguous in condemning it as morally unjust, unacceptable, barbaric, senseless, repugnant, and sacrilegious,” Bruni said.
The papal spokesman also insisted that Francis and his collaborators have made “numerous interventions” on the war in Ukraine “mostly to invite Pastors and faithful to prayer, and all people of good will to solidarity and efforts to rebuild peace.”
The pope’s ambiguous comments on the war have often elicited consternation from observers, most recently last Wednesday when he said that the “madness” of the war is suffered by both sides, and not merely by Russia, an assertion that provoked a sharp reproach from Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See.
“I think of so much cruelty, so many innocents who are paying for madness, the madness of all sides, because war is madness and no one in war can say: ‘No, I am not mad.’ The madness of war,” he said following his weekly general audience in the Vatican.
In reply, Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, said the pope’s words were “disappointing,” by seeming to equate “aggressor & victim, rapist and raped.”
The pope’s words Wednesday were redolent of a similar statement he made last May, when he claimed that there are no “good guys and bad guys” in the war between Russia and Ukraine.
To understand the Russia-Ukraine war, “we have to get away from the normal pattern of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’: Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad guy. Here there are no metaphysical good guys and bad guys, in the abstract,” Francis said.
At that time, the pope also expressed his opinion that Russia could have been “provoked” by NATO into invading Ukraine and that arms dealers also share some responsibility for stirring up the conflict.
These comments drew sharp criticism at the time from Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who responded that the causes of the war “lie within Russia itself,” insisting that no external factors had “provoked” Russia to act.
The light of the Holy Spirit is especially necessary today “for those who are trying to understand the causes and consequences of this full-scale Russian aggression,” Archbishop Shevchuk said. “Because we see that today the whole world is trying to deceive, to pretend that what is desired is real.”
“We see and know, experiencing here in Ukraine, that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is completely unprovoked,” the archbishop said. “Anyone who thinks that some external cause has provoked Russia into military aggression is either themselves in the grip of Russian propaganda or is simply and deliberately deceiving the world.”