Vatican City - Pope Francis discussed the Ukraine war on Wednesday with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow during a video conference call on March 16.
“The conversation centered on the war in Ukraine and the role of Christians and their pastors in doing everything to ensure that peace prevails,” the Holy See press office said.
The Pope thanked Patriarch Kirill for the meeting and agreed with him that “the Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus.”
“We are shepherds of the same Holy People who believe in God, in the Holy Trinity, in the Holy Mother of God: that is why we must unite in the effort to help peace, to help those who suffer, to seek ways of peace, to stop the shooting,” the press office quoted Pope Francis as saying.
“Those who pay the bill for the war are the people, it is the Russian soldiers and it is the people who are bombed and die,” the pope said.
“As pastors,” he continued, “we have a duty to stay close and help all the people who are suffering from the war. There was a time when even in our Churches we talked about holy war or just war. Today we cannot speak like that. The Christian conscience of the importance of peace has developed.”
Pope Francis concluded: “Wars are always unjust. For the one who pays is the people of God. Our hearts cannot help but weep before the children, the women killed, all the victims of war. War is never the way. The Spirit that unites us asks us as pastors to help the peoples who suffer from war.”
The Russian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with an estimated 150 million members, accounting for more than half of the world’s Orthodox Christians.
Pope Francis met with Patriarch Kirill at Havana airport in Cuba in 2016, the first meeting between a pope and a Patriarch of Moscow.
Consecrate Russia and Ukraine to Immaculate Heart of Mary
Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Vatican announced on Tuesday.
The Holy See press office said on March 15: “On Friday, March 25, during the Celebration of Penance at which he will preside at 5 p.m. in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
“The same act, on the same day, will be carried out in Fatima by His Eminence Cardinal Krajewski, Apostolic Almoner, as envoy of the Holy Father.”
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski was one of two papal envoys sent to Ukraine last week in an expression of the pope’s concern for the war-torn country’s population.
March 25 was the day in 1984 that Pope John Paul II consecrated Russia and the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It is also the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord.
The Ukrainian bishops had requested the Holy See to consecrate Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary writing “in these hours of immeasurable pain and terrible ordeal for our people” in response to many requests for the consecration.
“Responding to this prayer, we humbly ask Your Holiness to publicly perform the act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Ukraine and Russia, as requested by the Blessed Virgin in Fatima,” said the letter, published on the bishops’ website on Ash Wednesday, March 2.
-CNA