Vatican defends Francis
THE Vatican yesterday moved to defend Pope Francis from allegations he hasn’t come down hard enough on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, saying the pontiff clearly views the war launched by Moscow as ‘senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious’.
Last week, Ukraine summoned the top papal diplomat to complain after Francis had referred to a national Russian TV commentator who was killed by a car bomb in Moscow as a ‘poor girl’.
Francis was speaking about the slaying of Darya Dugina, the daughter of right-wing Russian political theorist Alexander Dugin, who fiercely backs the war.
A Vatican statement yesterday read: ‘The words of the Holy Father should be read as a voice raised in defense of human life and not taken as a political position.’