Pope Francis, public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia

Christopher Wright, Vatican correspondent of the National Catholic Register, reports on the Ukrainian foreign minister’s calling out the Vatican’s stance of drawing a false equivalence of Russia — the aggressor — and Ukraine — the heroic object of its brutality.  Excerpt:

The foreign minister said that Pope Francis has been a “symbol of sympathy, compassion and spiritual support” for the Ukrainian Catholics, noting that his prayer on Dec. 8 where he publicly wept for the suffering of the Ukrainian people “goes directly to the hearts of Ukrainians.”

But at the same time, he said that Francis cannot jointly call on the governments of both Russia and Ukraine to end the war, as it gives the impression that both parties bear some of the responsibility.

Specifically, he described the pope’s Oct. 2 Sunday Angelus address — where Francis called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the war and for Zelensky to be open to “serious proposals for peace” — as unhelpful.

“When you say, ‘I call on President Putin to stop the war,’ that makes perfect sense because President Putin started the war, and this is what you’re telling him to do,” said Kuleba.

But by calling on Zelensky to be open to serious peace negotiations, the pope gives the impression that the Ukrainian president is “not open to peace proposals and that he needs to be called upon to become open to it, which is simply not true,” the foreign minister said.

“This statement by His Holiness is factual in the first line, but interpretational in the second,” he noted. “Put together, they create the exactly the impression that both sides are guilty and that one is guilty because it attacked, and another is guilty because it doesn’t want peace.”

“No other country in the world wants peace more than Ukraine,” he countered.

Glory to Ukraine!