Remo Casilli/Reuters
The Vatican is in damage control mode after Pope Francis gushed over “great Russia” in comments to a group of young Russian Catholics over the weekend.
His remarks, in which he urged the group to be proud that they are “descendants of the great Mother Russia,” sparked outrage in Ukraine, where they were seen as eerily similar to Vladimir Putin’s speech justifying the slaughter of Ukrainians to preserve what he described as a great empire.
“It is precisely with such imperialist propaganda, the ‘spiritual ties’ and the ‘need’ to save ‘great Mother Russia,’ that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages,” a spokesman for Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said of the pontiff’s speech.