By making peace an absolute, Pope Francis failed to realize that he was, in fact, encouraging Russian aggression. His successor is expected to demonstrate courage and lucidity.
Now that the emotion caused by the announcement of the death of Pope Francis has subsided, the assessment of his pontificate appears, to say the least, mixed. Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s personality was strong and complex, at times divisive. His actions and message bear the marks of this complexity. In many respects, he defied the simplistic categories of “progressive” or “conservative.” Could he be described as a “libertarian-conservative,” as French historian and Orthodox theologian Jean-François Colosimo suggested, or as an ”impeded reformer,” in the words of journalist Vincent Hugeux, formerly with La Croix and L’Express? Should he be defined through oxymoron or contradiction?
Many rightly praise his commitment to migrants, his vision of a poor Church for the poor that goes beyond its walls to reach the peripheries, and his ecological encyclical Laudato si, which links climate issues, biodiversity, resource overexploitation, and social justice. But many of the same admirers often believe he was gravely mistaken regarding the war in Ukraine. We explained this extensively in Desk Russie on September 16, 2023, in an article titled “Pope Francis, Russia, and China: a Stubborn Disaster”.
Since then, things have hardly improved. In March 2024, the pontiff once again trapped himself in his defense of peace at any cost by calling on Kyiv to renounce fighting. “I believe that the strongest is the one who sees the situation, thinks of the people, and has the courage of the white flag to negotiate,” he said. He was of the opinion that Ukraine should have accepted defeat: “When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you must have the courage to negotiate,” he added. And just like Donald Trump, the Pope invoked the human cost argument to try to sway the decision: “How many more deaths will there be?” he asked.
Although he acknowledged that Ukraine was a victim of the war, he never clearly designated Russia as the aggressor. Worse, he sought pitiful excuses for it by attributing, in December 2022, the Kremlin soldiers’ cruelty not to those “of Russian tradition” but by blaming “the Chechens, the Buryats, and so on.” A racist vision instead of political clarity.
Xi’s Contempt and Putin’s Flattery
He was poorly rewarded for his efforts, as he was never invited to Moscow, neither by Patriarch Kirill nor by Vladimir Putin. Nor was he received in Beijing or granted a meeting with Xi Jinping, despite having delivered the Chinese Church to the complete control of the communist regime in Beijing.
Moreover, China offered only the bare minimum tribute, waiting 24 hours to express its “condolences,” and doing so through the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during a routine press briefing, treating it as a secondary piece of news. In doing so, China urged the Vatican – without naming it – to “recognize and respect the One-China principle.”
Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, was much more effusive, describing the late Pope as a “wise leader” and a “staunch defender of the high values of humanism and justice.” This homage, the tribute vice pays to virtue, emphasized that ”throughout his pontificate, he actively contributed to developing dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, as well as fostering constructive interaction between Russia and the Holy See.”
With his cynicism and mastery of propaganda, Putin was, so to speak, preaching to his own choir – and that of his loyal accomplice, Patriarch Kirill.
Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, diplomatically chose not to highlight contentious issues. Notably, he refrained from mentioning that, unlike many leading figures of the “free world,” Pope Francis – like Donald Trump – never visited Ukraine during the war to directly express compassion for the victims of Russian aggression and solidarity with the attacked nation. Did the pope even express regret for not having done so? In his tribute, wishing to share the sorrow of Catholics and all Christians, Volodymyr Zelensky chose instead to emphasize that the Ppope, whom he had met three times, ”prayed for peace in Ukraine and for the Ukrainian people,” and that he “was able to offer hope, alleviate suffering through prayer, and foster unity.”
What to Expect from His Successor?
The Vatican has little means to exert pressure other than moral authority over the parties to the conflict. Nevertheless, the first step would be to clearly designate the aggressor and call for respect for international law and treaties. The Holy See and its diplomats can also, as is already the case with the issue of Ukrainian children deported to Russia, act as mediators and offer their good offices in specific negotiations on a case-by-case basis. They could also serve as discreet communication channels between Moscow, Kyiv, and the capitals engaged in seeking a ceasefire first, and then a peace agreement.
All this requires, above all, that in the Vatican, the pursuit of peace is not separated from the demand for truth and justice. Peace cannot be an absolute behind which the aggressor and all potential predators of Ukraine might hide – particularly the United States under Donald Trump, who appears to be negotiating with Moscow over the plundering of Ukrainian resources.
The rhetoric of absolute peace to be achieved hic et nunc, even at the cost of denying an entire people’s aspirations for freedom, in the name of the sanctity of human life under all circumstances, amounts not only to sacrificing the victim while satisfying the aggressor, but also to encouraging further predatory actions by various means.
In geopolitical terms, this is the equivalent of preaching forgiveness to victims of sexual assault without any judicial denunciation of the criminals.
It is a way of imprisoning the future in the trauma of aggression, due to the failure to speak a word of truth and to support the necessary work – or struggle – that needs to accompany it to restore at least a minimum of fairness, to pursue justice, an endeavor that can never erase the harm done but that signals that the harm is named, recognized, and judged as such – meaning that the guilty pay a price, albeit symbolic, but nonetheless real and significant. Failing that, peace is nothing but a masquerade that ultimately grants the aggressor a false absolution and leaves them free to pursue new conquests.
Peace Must Be Won, Not Granted
To avoid falling into this counterfeit spiritual currency, we need to remember Machiavelli, whom we have previously mentioned. He held that just law arises only from the confrontation between the powerful’s desire to dominate and the people’s desire to free themselves from oppression. Urgin a people to renounce their fight amounts to stifling resistance to oppression and thereby renouncing the aspiration to establish a just order within the City (or in relations between nations). In Machiavelli’s perspective, it is the worst possible stance, both immoral and ineffective.
For a pope who would want, like his predecessor Pope Francis, to present himself as the brother and the voice of the poor, such a distorted vision of peace would be, to say the least, paradoxical – unless one believes that the poor must remain poor merely to offer those who lean toward them the empty glory of a pompously displayed yet unreal, hollow, and ultimately deceitful solicitude. This is the geopolitical version of Jacques Brel’s song Charitable Ladies or of the nonexistence of the “pure hands of Kantianism” denounced by French writer Charles Péguy – a man of profound faith who, without hesitation, rushed into battle to defend the freedom of his homeland at the cost of his life. Péguy, a champion of Joan of Arc, did not place the sacred in the same place as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who might have done well to read him more attentively.
In other words: peace needs to be won rather than granted. It is the fruit of courage, not surrender. Thus, it is not by disarming peoples that one opens the path to peace, but by giving them the means to defend themselves. Everything else is wishful thinking, and it is to be hoped that the next pope will rely on faith rather than on mere piety, to truly be a man of justice and peace.
Jean-François Bouthors is a journalist and essayist, contributing to the magazine Esprit and serving as an editorialist for Ouest-France. He is the author of several books, including Comment Poutine change le monde published by Editions Nouvelles François Bourin in 2016.