“I spoke to him via Zoom for 40 minutes,” the pope told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Tuesday. “The first 20 minutes he read to me, with a card in hand, all the justifications for war.”
“I listened and told him: I don’t understand anything about this,” said the Pope. “Brother, we are not state clerics, we can’t use the language of politics but the language of Jesus.”
“The Patriarch cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy,” the pope said.
Francis said the conference call with Kirill took place on March 16, and that both he and the Patriarch had agreed to postpone a planned meeting in Jerusalem to June 14.
“This will be our second one-on-one meeting, which has nothing to do with war,” the Pope said. “But now, he also agrees: Let’s stop, it may be a vague sign.”
In March Kirill Patriarch Kirill said that the conflict was an extension of a fundamental cultural conflict between the wider Russian world and Western liberal values, which are examples of gay pride’s expression.
Experts say Kirill’s comments provide important insights into the broader spiritual vision of Putin’s return to the Russian Empire, in which Orthodox religion plays an important role.
But his followers are paying the price for the tough stand of the Russian patriarch.
In March the Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam announced it was breaking ties with the leader, joining a growing number of priests and churches leaving Moscow over the war in Ukraine.