OPINION: Russia, Ukraine and the deafening silence of Pope Francis

The world awoke to the largest conflict in Europe since WWII after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning – targeting key cities in an alleged bid to ‘demilitarize’ Moscow’s western neighbor.

Shortly after the bombardments began and Russian forces crossed the border, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba declared that his country was officially at war.

“Putin has just launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Peaceful Ukrainian cities are under strikes. This is a war of aggression,” the minister tweeted on Thursday morning.

Russia’s invasion of its sovereign neighbor drew condemnations from across Europe and the Western world.

“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” U.S. President Biden tweeted on Wednesday night.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also took to Twitter to warn that Putin had “chosen the path of bloodshed and destruction by launching this unprovoked attack on Ukraine.”

Similar declarations have been made by governments from across the free world – including the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Israel, Australia, France, Germany, Belgium, the European Union, NATO and Ukraine’s Eastern European neighbors.

However, one voice was missing from the chorus of dissent to Putin’s Vladimir Putin’s bloody, illegal war.

Although Pope Francis said on Wednesday that the prospect of war in Ukraine caused “great pain in my heart" and condemned actions "destabilizing coexistence among nations and discrediting international law,” the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics stopped short of condemning the Kremlin's invasion of its neighbor. 

But why would the pontiff ignore a situation which endangers the lives of Ukraine’s five million Catholics – a group which makes up about 9% of the country’s total population? Some observers believe he is simply trying to appease the Russian Orthodox Church.

Pope Francis, after all, is keen to broker a second meeting with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow after their 2016 meeting in Cuba marked the first Catholic-Orthodox encounter since the Great Schism divided the Church in 1054.

Borys Gudziak, Metropolitan-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, told the National Catholic Reporter that although he understands the Vatican’s position, he believes Rome should hold the Russian Orthodox Church accountable for helping Putin formulate a “colonial policy for Russian society."

"Pope Francis has said many times that whenever Christians get caught up in power and money, we betray our vocations," Gudziak said. "When we are behind invasion and war, it's scandalous.”

Fr. Robert Lisseiko, spiritual director at the Pontifical Ukrainian College of St. Josaphat in Rome, further warned that Russia was waging a propaganda campaign and that the Russian Orthodox Church was helping push the Kremlin’s agenda.  

"Where have Christians gone that they are afraid to tell the truth to the government that they are doing something really diabolical?" he asked.

For this reason, Galadza believes the Vatican should be direct when criticizing Russia’s actions – noting that the Pope has great influence across all Eastern Christendom.

"What Ukraine needs is for the ability to speak the truth in love and not to be afraid to tell brothers and sisters in Christ that they also need to speak the truth in love," he said. "They should not talk in general terms about peace and Eastern Europe because that's the equivalent to saying thoughts and prayers."

But not all popes have been afraid to speak out against tyranny – especially in Eastern Europe.

In his first homily after his election as Pope in October of 1978, Pope John Paul II urged the world to “be not afraid.” The true meaning of John Paul II’s message was revealed in March of 1979 with the publishing of Redemptor Hominis where he openly condemned communism as a political system that respected neither human dignity nor freedom. 

Four months later in June 1979, the Pope made his historic trip to Poland and helped set in motion the liberation of his people. He would not only serve as a voice for his fellow Poles, however. As he noted during his first papal visit, “John Paul II, the Slav, is leading all these [Slavic] nations and people together with his own.” 

Referencing the late pontiff’s 9 day trip across Soviet Poland, former Polish Ambassador to the Holy See Janusz Kotanski praised the late pope’s willingness to stand firm against Moscow and his role in the fall of Communism in Soviet Poland.

“I know it was also of course the weakness of the Soviet economy, Ronald Reagan's very good and strong policies. However, who started it? Who did it? St. John Paul II, Karol Wojtyła and the millions of Poles who were not afraid,” he noted.

But while Pope John Paul II stood in solidarity with the forces of change that challenged communism in his native Poland, Francis has refused to join the free world in condemning Russia’s invasion of its Christian neighbor.

If silence really does imply consent, it could even be said that the Argentine pontiff has joined the ranks of anti-Democratic leaders like Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua -- all of whom have voiced their support for the Kremlin’s war. 

In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Francis wrote that, “Conflict cannot be ignored or concealed. It has to be faced.”

The best way to deal with conflict, he argued, is "to face conflict head on, to resolve it and to make it a link in the chain of a new process.”

As a bloody and unjust war continues to rage in Ukraine, Catholics around the world must pray that the Holy Father remembers his own words and finally sides with the Ukrainian people in their struggle for freedom and peace.