- Feb 5, 2002
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ROME – Yesterday Crux carried two stories which, at first blush, appear unrelated. The first concerned the latest Ukrainian backlash against Pope Francis’s praise of “Great Mother Russia,”while the second covered the discovery of a previously unnoticed bit of anti-fascist graffiti from the WWII years in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
Yet pushing beyond the headlines, the two stories do actually have something in common: To wit, they point to mounting concern among Pope Francis’s advisers and allies that just as his predecessor Pius XII has been pilloried as “Hitler’s Pope,” something similar could befall Francis down the line vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin.
(For that matter, the same accusation can, and has, been lodged against Francis with regard to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, but that’s a matter for another time.)
To begin with the Ukraine story, it pivots on Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has styled Francis as “pro-Russian” and “not credible” for his remarks in praise of Russian culture delivered in late August in a video address to Russian Catholic youth.
Continued below.
cruxnow.com
Yet pushing beyond the headlines, the two stories do actually have something in common: To wit, they point to mounting concern among Pope Francis’s advisers and allies that just as his predecessor Pius XII has been pilloried as “Hitler’s Pope,” something similar could befall Francis down the line vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin.
(For that matter, the same accusation can, and has, been lodged against Francis with regard to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping, but that’s a matter for another time.)
To begin with the Ukraine story, it pivots on Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has styled Francis as “pro-Russian” and “not credible” for his remarks in praise of Russian culture delivered in late August in a video address to Russian Catholic youth.
Continued below.
Defense of Pius XII reflects concern that Francis could be styled ‘Putin’s Pope’
Two stories point to mounting concern among Pope Francis’s advisers and allies that just as his predecessor Pius XII has been pilloried as “Hitler’s Pope,” something similar could befall Francis down the line vis-à-vis Vladimir Putin.
