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As has been the case in recent editions, this week’s issue of L´Osservatore Romano is focused on the serious situation that exists due to the war in Ukraine. Thus the cover is illustrated by a shocking and very significant photograph of Pope Francis showing a Ukrainian flag, recently brought from the city of Bucha, where hundreds of civilian deaths occurred.
Pope Bergoglio made that gesture of posing with that flag in the traditional Wednesday General Audience at the Holy See. The full text of the weekly catechesis is included in the edition, and His Holiness’s words on the war are included in full on the back cover.
“The recent news about the war in Ukraine, instead of bringing relief and hope, testifies to new atrocities, such as the Bucha massacre: increasingly horrible cruelties, carried out even against defenseless civilians, women and children. They are victims whose innocent blood cries out to heaven and begs: Let this war end! Shut up the weapons! Stop sowing death and destruction! Let us pray together for this… And yesterday, just from Bucha, they brought me this flag. This flag comes from the war, from that martyred city, Bucha. And besides, there are some Ukrainian children here with us. Let us greet them and pray with them. These children had to flee and reach a foreign land: this is one of the fruits of war. Let us not forget them, and let us not forget the Ukrainian people. It is hard to be uprooted from one’s own land because of a war,” the Pope said.
During the audience on Wednesday, April 6, Francis spoke in the Paul VI Hall about the war in Ukraine and also about the role of the United Nations and his recent trip to Malta. “After the second world conflict, attempts have been made to lay the foundations for a new history of peace, but unfortunately we have not learned and the old history of great competing powers has gone forward. In the current war in Ukraine, we are witnessing the impotence of the United Nations Organization,” the Pontiff said in the catechesis.
In this special issue of the Vatican newspaper in Spanish, seven pages are dedicated to the apostolic journey of Pope Francis to Malta. In his first speech at the “Grand Council Chamber” where the authorities of the country and the diplomatic corps were waiting for him, the Pope also referred there to the war in Ukraine: “It reappears arrogantly in the seductions of the autocracy, in the new imperialisms, in the generalized aggressiveness, in the inability to build bridges and start with the poorest. Today it is very difficult to think with the logic of peace. We have become accustomed to thinking with the logic of war. It is here that the icy wind of war begins to blow, which this time too has been nurtured over the years. Yes, the war has been in preparation for a long time, with large investments and arms trade. And it is sad to see how the enthusiasm for peace, which arose after the Second World War, has weakened in recent decades, as well as the path of the international community, with a few powerful people who continue on their own, looking for spaces and influence zones. And in this way, not only peace, but so many great issues, such as the fight against hunger and inequalities, have been effectively canceled from the main political agendas, “he said.
“For a long time, a meeting with Patriarch Kirill had been thought of,” the Pope said, specifying that “they are working on this, they are working and they are thinking about doing it in the Middle East. These are things as they are now. things that I have said to the authorities of each party are public. For me, none of the things that I have said is reserved. What I have spoken with the patriarch, he later made a beautiful statement of what we said to each other. With the president of I spoke to Russia at the end of the year when he called me to congratulate me, we spoke. Later, I also spoke with the president of Ukraine, twice. And I thought, on the first day of the war, that I had to go to the Russian embassy to speak with the ambassador, who is the representative of the people, and ask questions and give my impressions on the case. These are the official contacts I have had. With Russia I have done it through the embassy. In addition, I have spoken with the Major Archbishop of kyiv Monsignor Shevchuk,” said F rancid.
HB