Singing From The Same Hymnal With Slight Deviations

AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino     Pope Francis arrives to attend a ceremony at the Maronite Cathedral of Our Lady of Graces in Nicosia, Cyprus

"I listened and then told him: I don't understand anything about this."

"Brother, we are not state clerics, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus. We are pastors of the same holy people of God."

"Because of this, we must seek avenues of peace, to put an end to the firing of weapons."

"The patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin's altar boy."

"[The] barking of NATO at Russia's door [may have forced Putin to invade]. An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but maybe facilitated."

Pope Francis

"Patriarch Kirill recalled that at the end of the Soviet era, Russia received an assurance that NATO would not move an inch eastwards. However, this promise was broken, even the former Soviet Baltic republics joined NATO."

"Russia could not and cannot allow this to happen."

Russian Orthodox Church

Russian Orthodox Church says Pope Francis 'chose the wrong tone' over 'Putin's altar boy' comment

So recently reconciled, just as recently distancing themselves from each other's positions. The inescapable political dimensions aligned with religious convictions has placed two elite ranking clerics, each of whom assumes the position of shepherd over vast flocks of followers at odds with one another. The caution of diplomacy appears to have fled the scene when Pope Francis spoke frankly of the division between the world of religion and that of politics.

 

Except that for the fact that his further statements bridged that division. And has left simmering resentment of his sentiments and clumsy analogy linking Patriarch Kirill with Russian President Vladimir Putin to the extent that the Patriarch is fully in support of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine. Not the least bit reflective of a high-placed and esteemed leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church's assumed leading concern; that of peace and brotherhood.

 

Nothing can quite lead to a justification of Mr. Putin's order to the Russian military to launch an invasion of its neighbour. In the process destroying entire towns and villages, civic infrastructure, bombing hospitals, rail stations, schools, apartment buildings and even supposedly safe corridors arranged for people to escape the confines of a besieged city. And then there is the rape, the looting, the incidental murders.

 

Pope Francis himself failed to condemn the very leader by name when he despaired over the conflict. Somehow finding it politically diplomatic to abhor the war in its strident brutality but overlooking the mention of exactly who was responsible for launching it. And now buying the Russian president's grievance at NATO's expansion to excuse the rage a despotic ruler succumbed to, taking his revenge over a perceived betrayal of unity with Russia, to innocent civilian populations suffering the onslaught.

There is, thus, a degree of agreement between the two clerics; Pope Francis's on a more modest scale than Patriarch Kirill's, but each sympathetic to Russia's president's paranoia and purpose in choosing to destroy Ukraine to teach his Slavic cousins a lesson. Pope Francis, in his media interview in Italy described his conversation with his Orthodox counterpart who listed off justifications for the war, in a pre-printed agenda he read from.

The Russian Orthodox Church had its own version of the Zoom conference between the two elder Church statesmen: "It's regrettable that a month and a half after the conversation with Patriarch Kirill, Pope Francis chose the  wrong tone to convey the content of this conversation." It was, after all, a confidence betrayal of a colleague, housed in language more fitting to a flippant exchange between two low-ranking sport figures than the top echelon of Christianity.

How can they bring peace and harmony, in other words, to their parishioners when they themselves bicker between their chosen positions? In setting the record straight, the Orthodox Church added "the Pope said, in agreement with the Patriarch, that 'the Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus'." A senior cleric which has over 100 million followers, as opposed to an infinitely more senior cleric whose following numbers 1.34 billion.