Vatican seeks to defuse anger over Pope’s Ukraine ‘white flag’ comments

Vatican secretary of state is seeking to defuse outrage after Pope Francis’s comments that Ukraine should have the “courage of the white flag” to negotiate an end to the war.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s chief diplomat, insisted that a primary condition for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine is an end to Russia’s aggression and that any peace must be a “just peace”. Cardinal

Parolin made the comments on the same day Kyiv summoned the Holy See ambassador to complain about the Pope’s remarks.

Pope Francis’s comments to Swiss broadcaster RSI, recorded in early February but only aired on Saturday, elicited immediate criticism from Ukraine and its allies, even after the Vatican press office tried to redirect attention to his other remarks in the interview that “negotiation is never a surrender”.

The ruckus once again put the Vatican’s diplomatic corps in the position of having to smooth over the Pope’s informal, off-the-cuff way of speaking, providing a more articulated position in line with the Holy See’s tradition of calibrated diplomatic neutrality.

In an interview published yesterday, Cardinal Parolin noted that Pope Francis in another speech last month had called for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine and the search for a just and lasting peace.

“In that sense, it is obvious that the creation of such conditions aren’t just for one side, but both sides, and the first condition would be that of putting an end to the aggression,” Cardinal Parolin said in comments that also were reported by the Vatican's in-house Vatican News portal.

Cardinal Parolin noted that Francis’s “white flag” comthe ments were in response to a question that used the term, and that the pontiff subsequently insisted that “negotiation is never a surrender”.

The cardinal made similar comments to Italy’s state-run RAI, saying: “Peace in Ukraine will have to be a just peace. It means recognising mutual rights and also mutual duties, above all, taking into account the dignity of people.”

In the past the Pope has expressed solidarity with “martyred” Ukrainians but has nit called out Vladimir Putin.