Vladimir Putin’s June 4 phone call to Leo XIV was not an isolated event. It revealed the ongoing changes in relations between the Vatican and Moscow, coinciding with the start of the new pontificate.
First of all, that telephone conversation broke the silence between the Russian president and Pope Francis, a silence that lasted more than three years, since the beginning of the aggression against Ukraine.
And this already seemed contradictory, because between Francis and Leo there is no doubt that the former was always very understanding of the justifications put forward by the Kremlin, while the latter has made no secret of judging the conflict in Ukraine, from the beginning, as “a Russian imperialist invasion,” which has entailed and entails “crimes against humanity.”
Different, between the two popes, is also the exercise of international politics. Francis had relegated the secretariat of state to the margins, deciding the moves on his own or at times availing himself of that pro-Russian “parallel diplomacy” set in operation by the Community of Sant’Egidio. While right away Leo called the secretariat back to his side, restoring to it its role as the cornerstone not only of diplomacy but of the entire Apostolic See, designed in his time by Paul VI, “an expert on the Roman curia.”
A Vatican statement issued a few hours after the phone call with Putin on June 4 emphasized that the pope “made an appeal for Russia to make a gesture that favors peace,” fully in keeping with Leo’s overall judgment on the conflict, which only Russia, as the aggressor country, can put an end to.
But the Kremlin also published its account of the call. From which one can infer why Putin wanted it.
First of all, to reiterate to the pope that yes, Russia too “has the will to achieve peace through political and diplomatic means,” but on condition of “eliminating the root causes of the crisis,” all of which he attributes to the West.
In the second place, Putin wanted to decry to Pope Leo – as he had already done in a phone call to Donald Trump the same day – the intolerable acts of “terrorism,” in his judgment “aimed at civilians,” carried out in the previous days by Ukraine with attacks on air bases and other Russian infrastructure, implicitly warning that a severe and fitting retaliation by Moscow would follow, as in fact happened in the following days with the intensification of the bombings on Ukrainian cities, even far from the front line.
In the third place, Putin wanted to express “appreciation to the pope for his willingness to contribute to the resolution of the crisis, in particular for the Vatican’s depoliticized participation in the resolution of the urgent humanitarian issues.”
In which can be noted both a reference to the contacts underway for some time – partly through the efforts of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, as recalled by the Vatican statement – for the exchange of prisoners and for the repatriation of Ukrainian children transferred to Russia, and silence on the offer of the Vatican as a place for peace negotiations, made in mid-May by Pope Leo and Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin.
This offer was immediately rejected both by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and, even more harshly, by the Orthodox patriarchate of Moscow, from the lips of Kirill’s chief advisor, Father Nikolai Balashov, according to whom “the idea of the Vatican as a suitable place for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia could appeal only to one who has studied history poorly.”
It is no secret that Kirill, the patriarch of Moscow, is completely opposed to associating the Church of Rome, in any form, with a negotiating process for a “just and lasting” peace in Ukraine. And Putin does nothing to soften this intransigence; on the contrary, he takes advantage of it, as his phone call to Pope Leo further confirmed.
In it, in fact – again according to what was reported in the Kremlin statement – Putin expressed to Leo, at the request and on behalf of Kirill, “best wishes for success in his pastoral duties,” reciprocated by the pope – in the Vatican account – with the hope that “common Christian values can be a light that helps in seeking peace, defending life, and seeking authentic religious freedom.”
But that the patriarchate of Moscow remains cold toward Rome is further confirmed both by another passage of Putin’s phone call to the pope and by how the patriarchate of Moscow has greeted the beginning of this pontificate.
Because it is true that Kirill did not fail to convey his best wishes to the newly elect, but he took care not to participate in person at the inaugural Mass on Sunday, May 18, in St. Peter’s Square, like many other heads of Orthodox Churches, including ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew.
In Kirill’s place there was only a third-rank figure, Metropolitan Nestor of Korsun and Western Europe, that is, of the Orthodox of France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Monaco, exactly as in Putin’s place, after the sending of culture minister Olga Borisova was revoked “in extremis,” there was only the Russian ambassador to the Holy See, Ivan Soltanovsky.
But above all, when a few days later, on May 24 and 25, on the occasion of the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Metropolitan Antonij of Volokolamsk, second in command at the patriarchate and president of the department for external ecclesiastical relations, arrived in Rome, his schedule did not include any meeting with the new pope, even though he had been lavish of audiences with other Orthodox leaders passing through Rome, in particular with Patriarch Bartholomew.
This omission is all the more surprising because Metropolitan Antonij has been a regular visitor at the Vatican for years, as well as a longtime friend of the Community of Sant’Egidio and Cardinal Zuppi.
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Returning to Putin’s phone call to Leo, in the report released by the Kremlin there is a passage that is not reflected in the parallel Vatican statement.
It is where it reads: “Given the well-known efforts of the Kiev regime in the dismantling of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the hope was expressed that the Holy See would be more active in speaking out in support of religious freedom in Ukraine.”
To understand what Putin is referring to, one must first take a small step back to June 2, to the very brief and fruitless meeting held in Istanbul by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations.
There the Russians presented two of their plans for resolving the conflict, the first for a lasting peace and the second for a preliminary ceasefire.
In the first, under the heading “Key parameters of the final settlement,” point 11 reads: “Lifting of restrictions on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.”
The reference is to law no. 3894, passed by the Kyiv parliament on August 20, 2024, and in effect since May, which bans any religious organization in Ukraine that has its command center in Russia.
A law in which the main if not only target is precisely the Ukrainian Orthodox Church with its current Metropolitan Onufriy, historically affiliated with the patriarchate of Moscow, completely independent of which is instead the younger Ukrainian Orthodox Church governed by Metropolitan Epiphanius and born in 2018 with the approval of the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople and with the consequent bitter rift between him and Kirill.
Indeed, in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church historically affiliated with Moscow, several dozen clergymen – albeit isolated and condemned – militate in support of the “Russian world.” But it must be taken into account that already in the first months after the Russian aggression, this Church, as a whole, decidedly distanced itself from the patriarchate of Moscow, to the point of breaking with it on three key points: ceasing to cite the name of Patriarch Kirill in the canon of the Mass, refusing to receive the sacred chrism from the Church of Moscow every year, and erasing from its statutes every formula of dependence on the Russian Patriarchate.
Unfortunately, however, not even this last act has protected this Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the rigors of the new law no. 3894, according to which, in order to ban it, it is enough that its dependence continues to be written – as it is – in the statutes of the Moscow Patriarchate.
And this is one of the reasons why law no. 3894 has been judged illiberal by independent and competent observers and analysts, including the Seattle-based American jurist Peter Anderson, a great scholar of the Orthodox world.
In Ukraine, however, this law immediately received the explicit approval of all the other heads of Christian Churches, including the major archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
In the Orthodox camp, the aim actively supported by Constantinople patriarch Bartholomew is now to completely free the Ukrainian Orthodox Church led by Metropolitan Onufriy from any residual connection with Moscow, perhaps by temporarily incorporating it into a structure created “ad hoc” by the patriarchate of Constantinople.
And it is here that an important new development must be recorded, with the protagonist none other than Onufriy. Who, in a thoughtful talk on May 20 at the Theological Academy of Kyiv, and then again on May 27 at a solemn liturgy with all the bishops of his Church, once again supported “the complete canonical independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its unequivocal separation from the patriarchate of Moscow,” concluding with the following vow:
“Let us hope that the entire family of ‘autocephalous’ local Churches will support us morally, approve our canonical independence, and register it with due distinction.”
The photo above shows Metropolitan Onufriy in the quick of this solemn liturgy, giving voice to this hope.
And in Rome? At the Angelus of August 25, 2024, shortly after the approval in Kyiv of law no. 3894, Pope Francis spoke out against it with harshly critical words, the polar opposite of what the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church had said.
Naturally, Putin and Kirill were not displeased with this position that Francis took.
And now that Francis has been succeeded by Leo, who has never spoken on the matter, the Russian president in his phone call of June 4 did not fail to urge the new pope to also be “more active in expressing himself” on the above-mentioned issue.
But in the statement released by the Vatican there is no mention of a response from Leo to this request from the Russian president.
(Translated by Matthew Sherry: traduttore@hotmail.com)
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Sandro Magister is past “vaticanista” of the Italian weekly L’Espresso.
The latest articles in English of his blog Settimo Cielo are on this page.
But the full archive of Settimo Cielo in English, from 2017 to today, is accessible.
As is the complete index of the blog www.chiesa, which preceded it.