NATO started War in Ukraine by Barking at Putin’s door said Pope Francis

Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 2013. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.

Pope Francis has broached the possibility of going to Kyiv to try to negotiate a truce since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But now he says he’d rather fly to Moscow to try to reason with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he hasn’t openly condemned in the nearly three-month-long conflict and only did so gently in a lengthy interview with an Italian newspaper.

Francis also condemned the “brutality” of the war and compared it to Rwanda’s civil war in the 1990s, which resulted in a genocide of the Tutsi minority.

Pope Francis has regularly condemned the Russia-Ukraine conflict since it began in February, but he has avoided openly condemning Russians or Putin for the special military operations in Ukraine. According to reports, the Vatican’s neutral stance is in line with its international policy of keeping the door open for further talks.

Since mid-March, the Vatican has been demanding a meeting between Pope Francis and Putin. “Of course, we wanted the Kremlin’s chief to set aside some time. We haven’t gotten an answer yet, and we continue trying, even though I think Putin won’t be able or willing to meet at this moment,” the Holy See stated.

Francis also stated in the interview that he would not be heading to Kyiv for the time being because “first I have to go to Moscow, first I have to meet Putin.” The Holy See had dispatched two delegates to the war-torn country, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski and Cardinal Michael Czerny.

Francis also announced that he had cancelled a meeting with Patriarch Kirill, the Russian Orthodox Church’s head and a staunch Putin supporter.