Pope blasts Russia’s ‘infantile’ war, EU-Libya deal on migrants
VALLETTA, Malta — Pope Francis said Saturday he was considering a possible visit to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and blasted the leader who launched a “savage” war, delivering his most pointed denunciation yet of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In his remarks in Malta, Francis didn’t cite President Vladimir Putin by name, but the reference was clear when he said “some potentate” had unleashed the threat of nuclear war on the world in an “infantile and destructive aggression.”
“We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past,” Francis told Maltese officials on the Mediterranean island nation at the start of a weekend visit.
Francis sor far has avoided referring to Russia or Putin by name, in keeping with the Vatican’s tradition of not calling out aggressors to keep open options for dialogue. But Saturday’s criticism of the powerful figure responsible for the war marked a new level of outrage for the pope.
“Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interest, is provoking and fomenting conflicts, whereas ordinary people sense the need to build a future that will either be shared or not be at all,” he said.
Francis told reporters en route to Malta that a possible visit to Kyiv was “on the table,” but no dates have been set or trip confirmed. The mayor of the Ukrainian capital had invited Francis on March 8 to come as a messenger of peace along with other religious figures.
The Malta visit, originally scheduled for May 2020, was always supposed to focus on migration, given Malta’s role at the heart of Europe’s migration debate. The issue took on more import with the forced exodus of over 4 million Ukrainian refugees.
Francis focused his remarks on the perilous Mediterranean migration route and Europe’s flawed migration policies in welcoming people fleeing war, poverty and conflict.
Speaking with Malta’s president by his side, Francis denounced the “sordid agreements” the European Union has made with Libya to turn back migrants and said Europe must show humanity in welcoming them. He called for the Mediterranean to be a “theater of solidarity, not the harbinger of a tragic shipwreck of civilization.”
Francis was referring to the EU’s program to train Libya’s coast guard, which patrols the North African country’s coast for migrant smuggling and brings the would-be refugees back to shore. The program was strongly backed by Italy and other front-line Mediterranean countries to try to stem the flow of hundreds of thousands of desperate migrants each year.
But human rights groups have condemned the EU-funded program as a violation of the migrants’ rights and documented gross abuses in the Libyan detention camps.
Francis has condemned the Libyan detention facilities as concentration camps, but he went further Saturday to shame the EU for its complicity in the abuses there.
“Civilized countries cannot approve for their own interest sordid agreements with criminals who enslave other human beings,” he said.Malta has frequently called upon its bigger European neighbors to shoulder more of the burden receiving would-be refugees.
Francis has frequently echoed that call, and linked it on Saturday to the welcome the Maltese once gave the Apostle Paul, who according to the biblical account was shipwrecked off Malta around A.D. 60 while en route to Rome and was shown unusual kindness by the islanders.