Pope Francis and the head of the Russian Orthodox church, who backs the war in Ukraine, will not meet at a gathering of religious leaders in Kazakhstan next month, RIA news agency cited a senior Orthodox official as saying on Wednesday.
Francis, due to be in the capital Nur-Sultan from 13th to 15th September to attend the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, has said in several recent interviews he hopes to meet with Patriarch Kirill when in Kazakhstan.
Pope Francis holds the weekly general audience at the Vatican, on 24th August. Vatican Media/Handout via Reuters.
But Bishop Anthony, the Russian church’s second most powerful bishop, told RIA that the Patriarch would not attend the event. He did not say why not, but said Kirill would be represented instead by an official delegation.
“It [a meeting] must be an independent event by virtue of its importance,” said Anthony, in charge of foreign relations, who held talks with Francis in early August. Francis has met Kirill once before, in Cuba in 2016.
Kirill, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has given enthusiastic backing to the invasion of Ukraine.
In June, Francis implicitly accused Russia of “armed conquest, expansionism and imperialism” in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican on Wednesday criticised Pope Francis for referring to Darya Dugina, daughter of a prominent Russian ultra-nationalist, who was killed by a car bomb near Moscow, as an innocent victim of war.
It is highly unusual for ambassadors to the Vatican to criticise the pope publicly.
“Innocents pay for war,” Francis said earlier at his Wednesday general audience in a sentence where he referred to “that poor girl thrown in the air by a bomb under the seat of a car in Moscow”.
Russia blamed the killing on Ukrainian agents, a charge Kyiv denies.
Alexander Dugin, Darya’s father, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a new Russian empire that would include Ukraine.
Darya Dugina broadly supported her father’s ideas and appeared on state TV in her own right to offer support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Pope Francis meets with Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, Andriy Yurash during a private audience at the Vatican, on 7th April. PICTURE: Vatican Media/Handout via Reuters/File photo.
In a Tweet, Andriy Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, said the Pope’s words were “disappointing”.
“How [is it] possible to mention one of ideologists of [Russian] imperialism as innocent victim? She was killed by Russians,” he said.
Francis called the war “madness”. He said Ukrainian and Russian children had been killed and that “being an orphan knows no nationality”.
In his Tweet, Yurash said: “can’t speak in same categories about aggressor and victim, rapist and raped”.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to Yurash’s comments.
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In another part of his address, Pope Francis, called for “concrete steps” to end the war in Ukraine and avert the risk of a nuclear disaster at the Zaporizhzhia power plant.
Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of firing at the facility, the largest of its kind in Europe and which pro-Moscow forces took over soon after the 24th February invasion. The United Nations has called for the area to be demilitarised.
Francis spoke on the day Ukraine marked its independence from Soviet rule in 1991 and six months after Russian forces invaded.
In an interview with Reuters last month, Francis said he wanted to visit Kyiv but also wanted to go to Moscow, preferably first, to promote peace.
Clarification: This article has been clarified to show Patriarch Kirill will not attend the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.
