The unexpected papal reference to “White flag” it certainly risks damaging the peace strategy for Ukraine tenaciously built by Francis over the past two years. And it certainly doesn’t improve communication between the Vatican and Kyiv. And to think that 2023 ended with a solemn decree of President Zelensky who granted the honor of the Order of Merit to Cardinals Parolin, Secretary of State, and Zuppi, president of the Italian episcopal conference for the “significant contribution to the strengthening of intestatal cooperation (and) to the support of state sovereignty and integrity territorial territory of Ukraine”.
Words have weight. If the person who pronounces them is at the top of the Catholic Church, a community of one billion three hundred million people, the weight is even greater. It is true that in this case the cue came from the Swiss television interviewer. But that’s no excuse. The pontificate of Benedict XVI it was ruined by wrong words: towards Muslims, on the protection of condoms in the fight against AIDS, on the advent of Nazism seen as the takeover of a limited gang of criminals.
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In diplomatic circles the phrase is cataloged as embarrassing. And it will be up to Francis to find a way to bring the discussion back to understandable tracks. Indeed, we cannot forget that the tragic death toll and enormous destruction on Ukrainian soil were caused by the Russian invasion and that Kyiv has every right to defend itself. Without forgetting that the hysteria of the opponents of a peace process has actually coined the easy slogan of “surrender party”, stuck to those who work to end the conflict. Without forgetting that there are conservative fringes of the Catholic world that support the clash with Russia and there are fringes of the Catholic reformist world that consider Putin a new Hitler and therefore I am in favor of an all-out war.
Francis must take this into account to broaden the front of those who want peace and avoid narrowing it. Just as remembering Moscow’s responsibilities does not mean diminishing the chances for peace. Frank conversations at the negotiating table if anything they favor the agreement.
However, among the chorus of international comments there is one aspect to note. Unlike other occasions, there were no violent attacks on the pontiff from the Ukrainian side. Disapproval yes, insults no. Foreign Minister Kuleba invited the Pope to support the “right reasons” of those who are victims without supporting the aggressor. President Zelensky recalled that the Church in Ukraine is on the front with its chaplains and does not pretend to abstractly mediate, 2,500 kilometers away, “between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you”.
The Ukrainian embassy to the Holy See stressed in a statement that at the time of World War II no one thought of negotiating with Hitler. Only an association of Ukrainians in Italy he took it head on the pontiff harshly, defining his statements as “shocking, embarrassing and deeply offensive”. But it is not an attack that comes from government officials. These nuances in attitudes reflect awareness of the international situation it’s changing and that the Vatican – like John Paul II when he frontally opposed the American war in Iraq – is attested on the side of geopolitical rationality.
The Vatican scheme, today in total contrast with the positions of President Macron (France), Annalena Baerbock (Foreign Minister of Germany), Poland, Great Britain and the Baltic States, can be summarized in a few points on which there is a broad consensus on the international scene outside the NATO area.
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1. War it was avoidable. Just as the United States would never allow Mexico to be part of a military alliance with China, so it was and is possible to reach an agreement on neutrality of Ukraine, guaranteeing non-entry into NATO.
2. There was and is every possibility of finding a solution for Crimea (which has never been part of Ukraine neither by language nor by ethnicity nor by tradition) and for the Donbass populated by Russians (South Tyrol-type recipe) .
3. The establishment of an International Fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine with a decisive contribution from Moscow is practicable.
In this sense, Francis’ push to start “talking about the need to talk” (according to the brilliant definition of an article that appeared in the prestigious American magazine Foreign Affairs) is connected to the mood of a large part of public opinion and the European and American business world, which believes nonsense to bleed out economically in a war of attrition or to throw oneself headlong into operations at the risk of nuclear conflict like “Doctor Strangelove”.
Francis looks afar, even if his supporters in the Vatican dream that he sometimes holds his tongue.