In his Easter message on the 9th, Roman Catholic Pope Francis paid attention to the war in Ukraine and emphasized that the international community should work together to end the war.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the pope, who often lamented the suffering of the Ukrainian people after the Russian invasion of Ukraine but received considerable criticism for not calling Russia an aggressor, prayed for the return of the injured, those who lost their families, and prisoners of war on both sides without calling Russia an aggressor. said it did.
On this day, the message to ‘Poetry (Rome) and the World’, which is given twice a year, was read out to tens of thousands of people gathered in the plaza below from the studio loggia in front of St. Peter’s Cathedral. The pope presided over the morning Easter Mass just before morning in the square.
On Easter, the holiest day in Christianity, Pope Francis prayed to “the risen Lord” to “help the beloved people of Ukraine on their journey toward peace and to send Easter light down upon the people of Russia.”
In Ukraine, government officials and church leaders have accused the Vatican of being ambivalent about the war and treating invaded Ukraine and aggressor Russia equally.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Pope Francis’ rhetoric about Ukraine was increasingly blaming Russia as the war dragged on. At the end of last year, he compared the war in Ukraine to Stalin’s anti-aircraft famine in the 1930s and Nazi genocide to Jews.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported somewhat differently to the Journal that Francis had regularly referred to Ukraine and its people as being “martyrized” and had used words such as ‘aggression’ and ‘atrocities’ to describe Russia’s actions. .
At the same time, he interpreted the pope’s message that he hoped that “the light of Easter would shine on the Russian people” as “hope that the Russian people would find out the truth about their country’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.