A high-risk trip? the pope francis indicated on Saturday that an upcoming visit to Ukraineat the invitation of the President Volodymyr Zelensky, was “on the table”. Asked by the press on the plane that took him from Rome to Malta regarding the possibility of a trip to Ukraine, the sovereign pontiff replied: “Yes, it is on the table”, without further details.
Pope Francis, 85, was invited last month by Volodymyr Zelensky to play the role of mediator in the negotiations between kyiv and Moscow and to visit his country invaded at the end of February by Russian troops. He was also invited by the mayor of kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, in order to “show his compassion” with the Ukrainian people.
The pope denounces “the new imperialisms”
Traveling to the Mediterranean archipelago of Malta, the pope did not mince words on Saturday morning in a speech delivered in Valletta to Maltese President George Vella and the diplomatic corps. He lambasted the actions of ‘a powerful few’ motivated by ‘nationalist interests’, in a clear allusion to the Russian president Vladimir Poutine, without however naming him.
The pope also denounced “the seductions of autocracy” and “the new imperialisms” which threaten the world with the threat of an “extensive Cold War which might suffocate the life of peoples and generations”.
A predominantly Orthodox country, Ukraine has a large Greek-Catholic minority attached to the Vatican, which is concentrated in the west of the country. Third Church in Ukraine, this Catholic denomination of Eastern rite claims some 5.5 million faithful in this former Soviet republic.
