Pope Francis has compared the war in Ukraine to the extermination of the Jews under Nazism

The Pope francesco On Wednesday he compared the war in Ukraine to the extermination of Polish Jews under the Nazis and renewed his plea pray for peace” before the conflict in the European country invaded by Russia.

“Last Monday the Center for Catholic Jewish Relations of the Catholic University of Lublin commemorated the anniversary of Operation Reinhardt, which provoked the extermination during the Second World War of almost two million victimspredominantly of Jewish origin”, the Pope recalled during the general audience he held in the Vatican.

Greeting the Polish faithful, the Pope asked that “the memory of this horrible event arouses in all resolutions and actions of peace”.

“History repeats itself, repeats itself, now let’s see what is happening in Ukraine. Let us pray for peace,” Francis said in this context.

With over 100 interventions against the war since the beginning of the conflict, the Pope renews his request for a ceasefire and negotiations leading to peace every week, offering Russia and Ukraine Vatican mediation which for the moment has not been accepted by the countries to war.

“martyr city”

In a recent interview with Jesuit magazine America, Pope says Ukrainians are “a people martyred” by “Russian cruelty”which generated that the Russians reacted harshly by accusing him of “a scandalous perversion of the truth”.

“If there is a martyred people, it is because someone martyred them. When I speak of Ukraine, I speak of the cruellest because I have a lot of information on the cruelty of the troops entering the country,” said the Argentine Pope.

On that occasion, the person responsible for responding was the spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, Maria Zajarova, who said that the Pope’s demonstrations not only exhibit “Russophobia” but also “a scandalous perversion of the truth”.

Several months ago, Francis had proposed himself as a mediator and should have taken advantage of his friendship with the Russian patriarch Kirill (Cyril), who has considerable influence over Putin, who converted to Orthodox Christianity, to open a peace dialogue with the president of Russia.

But the Pope said in an interview that the patriarch “cannot become Putin’s altar boy” and this statement was considered completely offensive by the patriarch and by the Russian president himself.