pope francis visit russia 2022

Pope makes surprise visit to Russian Embassy to the Vatican

The visit came as a surprise as it did not follow typical protocol.

The Vatican press office confirmed that Pope Francis made a visit to the Russian Embassy to the Holy See to express his concern about the fighting in Ukraine on Friday morning.

The Russian Embassy to the Holy See is a short distance outside of Vatican City situated on the road leading into St. Peter's Square, and this was seen by most as a strong personal papal initiative.

Aside from saying the visit lasted just over an hour, the Vatican provided no further information nor distributed any video or photographs. The pope was seen leaving the embassy building seated in the front seat of a small, white car.

MORE: Russia-Ukraine live updates

Ambassador Aleksandr Avdeyev, the Russian diplomat at the embassy, told Russian media that "the pope personally wanted to ask about the situation in Donbas and Ukraine" and expressed his great concern about the humanitarian situation and conditions of the population. He reportedly urged for the care of children, the sick and the people who were suffering.

The pope's surprise and unprecedented visit to the embassy took many Vatican watchers by surprise, as it is normal protocol for ambassadors to come to the Vatican to meet with the pope. However, Pope Francis has in the past dropped in to see people in Vatican offices outside the walls of the tiny state when he has urgent matters he wishes to discuss.

On Thursday, Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, said in a video statement released after the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine that although the tragic scenarios everyone feared were becoming reality "there is still time for goodwill, there is still room for negotiation." He said he hoped those who hold the destiny of the world in their hands would have a "glimmer of conscience."

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Commentators have noted that the pope and the Vatican have been careful about publicly criticizing and naming Russia, some say, so as not to antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church.

On Wednesday at the end of his general audience in the Vatican, Pope Francis called on believers and nonbelievers to pray and fast for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday to combat the "diabolical insistence, the diabolical senselessness of violence," saying that "once again the peace of all is threatened by partisan interests."

MORE: Questions about the Ukraine-Russia conflict, answered

He appealed to those with political responsibilities to do a serious examination of conscience before God and urged world leaders to "refrain from any action that would cause even more suffering to the people, destabilizing the coexistence between nations and discrediting international law."

Earlier Friday, the Vatican press office announced the pope would not make his scheduled one-day trip to Florence Sunday and would have to skip the Ash Wednesday ceremony in the Vatican at the start of Lent due to a flare up of knee pain. His doctors have told him he needs a longer period of rest, but that did not seem to stop him making Friday's surprise visit.

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Pope Francis says he may visit Kyiv and blasts Russia for "savage" war

April 2, 2022 / 9:29 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Pope Francis says he is studying a possible visit to Kyiv and he blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for launching a "savage" war , as he arrived in Malta and delivered his most pointed and personalized denunciation yet of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Francis didn't cite Putin by name, but the reference was clear when he said that "some potentate" had unleashed the threat of nuclear war on the world in an "infantile and destructive aggression" under the guise of "anachronist claims of nationalistic interests."

Speaking to Maltese authorities Saturday, Francis said: "We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past." 

Francis has to date avoided referring to Russia or Putin by name. But Saturday's personalization of the powerful figure responsible marked a new level of outrage for the pope, who spoke as a humanitarian crisis in the encircled Ukrainian port city of Mariupol deepened, and after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of mines outside the capital, Kyiv.

There are still more than 150,000 residents left inside Mariupol — unable or unwilling to leave as Russian tanks continue to pound what's left of it. On Saturday, another Red Cross convoy was expected to attempt to evacuate more residents from the city, which has been under siege for five weeks. 

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Pope Francis offers to meet Putin to try to end Ukraine war

Pope Francis says he made a request to meet Russian president three weeks after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Pope Francis has said he offered to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to stop the war in Ukraine but has yet to hear back.

The pontifex made the request for a meeting via the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 20 days after Putin ordered troops to enter Ukraine on February 24 , the pope told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Tuesday.

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Popes for decades have sought to visit Moscow as part of the longstanding effort to heal relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which split with Rome more than 1,000 years ago. But an invitation has never been forthcoming.

“Of course, it would be necessary for the leader of the Kremlin to make available some window of opportunity,” the pope was quoted as saying.

“But we still have not had a response and we are still pushing, even if I fear that Putin cannot and does not want to have this meeting at this moment,” he added.

Following suggestions over a visit to the Ukrainian capital, the pope was clear: “I am not going to Kyiv now … I have to go to Moscow first, I have to meet Putin.”

. @Pontifex_it : «I am ready to meet Putin in Moscow» | exclusive interview with @lucfontana , editor in chief @corriere https://t.co/Yxvs44i7pu — Corriere della Sera (@Corriere) May 3, 2022

During the interview, Francis also reported a conversation he had in March with the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill – a staunch supporter of the invasion.

“With paper in hand, he read all of the justifications for the war,” the pope told Corriere. “I listened and told him: ‘I don’t understand any of this. Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use language of politics, but that of Jesus … For this we need to find the paths of peace, to stop the firing of arms.’”

“He can’t turn into Putin’s altar boy,” Francis added. The two religious leaders were supposed to meet in Jerusalem, but the Vatican called off the meeting to avoid “confusion”.

The pope has repeatedly called for an end to the hostilities in the war-torn country but has not directly criticised Putin.

In early April, the pope said some “potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts”.

Francis has frequently denounced the weapons industry and the announced increases in defence spending by the West in recent weeks.

But he has also defended the right of Ukrainians to protect their territory from the Russian invasion, in line with Catholic social doctrine. He told Corriere he felt he was too removed to judge the morality of resupplying the Ukrainian armed forces from the West.

But he also said he was trying to understand why Russia had reacted as it had. Maybe “this barking of NATO at Russia’s door” had prompted it, he was quoted as saying, “An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but may be facilitated.”

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Pope Francis says visit to Kyiv ‘on the table’ and implicitly criticises Putin

Head of Catholic church invited to Ukrainian capital by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Mayor Vitali Klitschko

• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates

Pope Francis has said he is considering visiting the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and implicitly criticised Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin , over the invasion of Ukraine.

The head of the Catholic church was invited by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy , and the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, along with Ukrainian religious leaders on 8 March.

At the time of the invitation, the Vatican had confirmed receipt of a letter and said the pope was praying for Ukrainians but made no mention of any travel plans.

But asked by a reporter on the plane taking him from Rome to Malta on Saturday whether he was considering the invitation, Francis said: “Yes, it is on the table.” He gave no further details.

Later, in a hard-hitting speech in the island’s presidential palace, the pope said: “From the east of Europe , from the land of the sunrise, the dark shadows of war have now spread. We had thought that invasions of other countries, savage street fighting and atomic threats were grim memories of a distant past.

“However, the icy winds of war, which bring only death, destruction and hatred in their wake, have swept down powerfully upon the lives of many people and affected us all.

“Once again, some potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, 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, without mentioning Putin by name.

The invitation from Ukrainian political leaders has been supported by the major archbishop, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, of Ukraine’s Byzantine Rite Catholic church and Ukraine’s ambassador to the Vatican, Andriy Yurash.

Francis has previously described Vladimir Putin’s war as a “unjustified aggression” and denounced the “atrocities”, but has been careful not to mention Russian culpability for the war.

On Thursday, the European parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, met Zelenskiy in Kyiv to give the message that the EU would help rebuild the country after the war.

The most high-profile visit so far, however, was undertaken by the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia on 16 March. In a press conference after the meeting, the Czech prime minister, Petr Fiala, told Ukrainians: “Europe stands with you.”

Pope Francis, 85, was visiting Malta on Saturday for a two-day trip in an attempt to draw attention to a migration crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.

After landing, he used for the first time an elevator to descend from the ITA aircraft on to the tarmac. He was also seated in his popemobile during a tour of the island’s capital, Valletta. Francis has been suffering from a painful knee inflammation for months.

More than 10.5 million people have been displaced either within Ukraine or abroad as refugees, totalling around a quarter of the country’s population. About 13 million people are estimated to be in urgent need of humanitarian assistance across the country.

Metsola met the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, with Ukrainian refugees on Saturday morning at Otwock school in Warsaw.

She said: “We are impressed by the efforts made by Poland, its communities and citizens. You have given people in need a safe and secure space. This is heartwarming to see it – it is the best of Europe.

“However, Poland has been carrying the largest weight of the consequences of the war outside Ukraine. Therefore, we need more support to Poland and other countries that are receiving and hosting people who are fleeing the war in Ukraine.”

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Pope Francis targets Russia as he joins world religious leaders to call for end to 'childlike' warmongering at Bahrain interfaith summit

Pope Francis has called for the world’s religious leaders to counter “childlike” whims of the powerful to make wars at an interfaith summit in the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

Key points:

• Pope Francis told an interfaith summit in Bahrain that religious leaders gathering is evidence that they've chosen to "set sail on the same waters"
• Global Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders were present
• It's the pope's second visit to a Gulf Arab country after a 2019 trip to Abu Dhabi 

On Friday, with Russia's war in Ukraine raging, the pope joined Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders in calling for the world's great religions work together for peace, telling the summit that religion must never be used to justify violence.

It was his second day in Bahrain and Pope Francis closed out a conference on East-West dialogue sponsored by King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa.

That was his second such conference in as many months, following one in Kazakhstan.

The pope has previously said that people of different faiths meeting could help heal conflicts and promote a more just and sustainable world.

Sitting around him in the Sakhir royal palace grounds were leading Muslim imams, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, and US rabbis who have long engaged in interfaith dialogue, as well as the king himself.

Speaker after speaker called for an end to Russia's war in Ukraine and the start of peace negotiations.

The Russian Orthodox Church — which sent an envoy to the conference — has strongly supported the Kremlin in its war and justified it on religious grounds .

However, the pope told the gathering that, while the world seemed to be heading apart like two opposing seas, the mere presence of religious leaders together was evidence that they "intend to set sail on the same waters, choosing the route of encounter rather than that of confrontation".

"It is a striking paradox that, while the majority of the world's population is united in facing the same difficulties, suffering from grave food, ecological and pandemic crises, as well as an increasingly scandalous global injustice, a few potentates are caught up in a resolute struggle for partisan interests," he said.

"We appear to be witnessing a dramatic and childlike scenario: In the garden of humanity, instead of cultivating our surroundings, we are playing instead with fire, missiles and bombs, weapons that bring sorrow and death, covering our common home with ashes and hatred.”

King Hamad, for his part, urged a coherent effort to stop Russia's war in Ukraine and to promote peace negotiations, "for the good of all of humanity".

The visit was Pope Francis' second to a Gulf Arab country ,  after his 2019 landmark trip to Abu Dhabi , where he signed a document promoting Catholic-Muslim fraternity with a leading Sunni cleric, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, who is the grand imam of Al-Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning in Cairo, and has become the pope’s key partner in promoting greater Christian-Muslim understanding.

The Sheikh joined Pope Francis in Bahrain and was on hand last month in Kazakhstan too. In his prepared remarks, he called for an end to Russia's war "to spare the lives of innocents who have no hand in this violent tragedy".

He also called for Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims to engage in a similar process of dialogue, to try to heal their centuries of divisions, saying Al-Azhar was prepared to host such an encounter.

"Let us together chase away any talk of hate, provocation and excommunication and set aside ancient and modern conflict in all [their] forms and with all [their] negative offshoots," he said.

Bahrain praised as ‘role model’ for ‘coexistence and tolerance’

Bahrain is ruled by a Sunni monarchy that has been accused by human rights groups of systematic discrimination against its Shi'ite majority, charges the government rejects.

Later on Friday, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb was to meet privately with Pope Francis and participate in a larger encounter at the mosque in the royal palace with the Muslim Council of Elders, which he heads.

Pope Francis was also bringing his message of dialogue to Bahrain's Christian leaders by presiding over an ecumenical meeting and peace prayer at the Our Lady of Arabia Cathedral, the largest Catholic Church in the Gulf, which was inaugurated last year on land gifted to the church by the king.

The pope opened his visit to Bahrain on Thursday by urging Bahrainian authorities to renounce the death penalty and ensure basic human rights were guaranteed for all citizens — a nod to Bahraini Shi'ite dissidents who have said they have been harassed and detained, subjected to torture and "sham trials", with some sentenced to death for their political activities.

However, the Bahrainian government denies discriminating against Shi'ites.

The pope also aimed to highlight Bahrain's tradition of religious tolerance.

Unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where Christians cannot openly practice their faith, Bahrain is home to several Christian communities as well as a small Jewish community.

In his prepared remarks to the forum, US Rabbi Marc Schneier — who has long worked to promote Jewish-Muslim understanding and serves as the king's special adviser on interfaith matters — praised Bahrain as a "role model in the Arab world for coexistence and tolerance of different faith communities".

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July 4, 2022 Russia-Ukraine news

By Helen Regan , Andrew Raine , Amy Woodyatt, Hafsa Khalil and Ed Upright, CNN

Pope Francis says he still aims to visit Russia and Ukraine

From CNN's Livia Borghese and John Allen in Rome

Pope Francis has said he still plans to visit Russia and Ukraine.

“I would like to go, it is possible that I manage to go to Ukraine. The first thing is to go to Russia to try to help, but I would like to go to both capitals," said Pope Francis in an exclusive interview with Reuters, which was recorded on Saturday.

In the interview released Monday, he firmly denied rumors of a possible resignation due to health issues.

The pontiff, whose trip to Africa scheduled for July 2-7 was canceled due to problems with his knee, said he is planning to travel to Canada at the end of July, and after that, he is willing to visit both Moscow and Kyiv.

Putin will not congratulate Biden on Independence Day

From CNN’s Anna Chernova

Russian President Vladimir Putin will not send his congratulations to US counterpart Joe Biden on Independence Day this year due to the country’s “unfriendly” policy towards Russia, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. 

“This has to do with the fact that this year marked the culmination of an unfriendly policy towards our country by the United States,” Peskov added, saying that “it can hardly be considered appropriate” to send congratulations in these conditions.

Putin and Biden had not spoken since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Peskov confirmed during a conference call last Thursday.

Ukraine asks Turkey to "detain" Russian-flagged ship carrying Ukrainian grain 

From CNN's Olga Voitovych, Radina Gigova, Yong Xiong and Sanyo Fylyppov 

Ukraine has requested that Turkish authorities detain a Russian-flagged ship carrying Ukrainian grain, the country's ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar told CNN Saturday.   

The Zhibek Zholy vessel is currently at anchor near the Turkish port of Karasu as "it was in fact detained by Turkish customs authorities and it is not allowed to enter the port," Bondar said. "Now we are waiting for the decision of the relevant authorities of Turkey regarding the actions that the law enforcement agencies of Ukraine insist on," he said.     

The Turkish trade ministry has not yet responded to CNN’s request for confirmation that the ship has been detained. 

Bodnar said Ukraine initially addressed the Turkish foreign ministry regarding the ship on Thursday, and on Friday the Ukrainian embassy in Turkey received an appeal from Ukrainian authorities "to ensure its detention and inspection."    

"Maybe, we will demand its arrest as well," Bodnar said. "We have sent appeals to the Turkish authorities, have organized several communications with senior officials." CNN has reached out to Turkey’s Foreign Ministry about Bodnar’s claim.   

Ukraine has repeatedly said Russia has stolen hundreds of thousands of tons of grain since the start of the war.   

According to the ship tracking website Marine Traffic, the cargo ship left the Russian port Novorossiysk on June 22 and spent nearly a week at sea between Ukraine and Russia.    

The cargo ship turned its tracker on when it left the Sea of Azov for Karasu, Turkey, on June 29, and arrived at the Turkish port on Friday, according to Marine Traffic.    

Although it's possible the grain came from neighboring areas, Bodnar said the ship's loading point was "definitely" Berdiansk -- "occupied territory," without elaborating on why he is certain of this. Bodnar added that he doesn't have the name of the company or the district where grain was taken from.

Yevgeny Balitsky, the head of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, now partially under Russian control, said on Telegram Thursday the first merchant ship had left the Berdiansk port on the Azov sea, and reiterated claims by Russia that the waters surrounding the port have been de-mined by the engineering units of Russia’s Novorossiysk naval base.    

Bodnar said Ukraine sent the second appeal to Turkey on Friday "when we had just learned that the ship was coming" after the initial appeal was made on Thursday "when we received information from open sources that such a vessel was loading and apparently intended to enter the port."      

Friday's appeal has "a legal" component and has been sent "to all authorities of Turkey responsible for making decisions," he said.     

According to Bodnar, Turkey's Ministry of Trade responded to the initial appeal saying the ship will remain anchored   near the port of Karasu without being allowed to be unloaded or go back, while Turkey evaluates Ukraine's requests.   

"I have an impression that the Russian side tried to set a precedent and tried to start transporting everything from the occupied ports -- this is Berdiansk, it may be Mariupol," Bodnar said.

"Moreover, this is probably one of the attempts to drive a wedge between Turkey and Ukraine. As well as an attempt to legalize its occupation of ports that belong to Ukraine."    

In response to media reports that Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has submitted a request to Turkey to detain and arrest the cargo ship, the ship's owner, the Kazakhstan national railway company Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), said in a statement Saturday that "KTZ requested confirmation from the Ukrainian authorities regarding such request.    

"Active consultations are underway with the ambassadors of both countries [Turkey and Ukraine]," the statement said. 

"The seller, which is a company registered in Europe, insists that the transaction is legal. In order to clarify the situation and exclude violations of international law, KTZ sent a letter to the lessee of the vessel with a request to provide, as a matter of urgency, a detailed explanation of the situation and submission of all supporting documents (contracts, certificates, etc.)," the company said.      

"KTZ assures of its commitment to compliance with international law," it added.      

Ukraine accuses Russia of blocking its ports and trying to "steal" Ukrainian grain. The United Nations has said Russia's blockade of Ukrainian ports has already raised global food prices and threatens to cause a catastrophic food shortage in parts of the world.    

Russia has repeatedly denied it is blocking the ports and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called allegations Russia was stealing grain from its neighbor "fake news." 

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the date when Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey made an initial appeal to investigate the ship, which was on Thursday.

Russia says weekend strike on Belgorod was aimed to provoke Moscow

From Anna Chernova and CNN’s Vasco Cotovio

Moscow says the alleged missile strike carried out by Ukrainian forces on the city of Belgorod aimed to provoke Russia, according to the spokeswoman for the country’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.

“The goal of the Kyiv regime is to strike with unguided weapons at residential areas of cities. We understand that these actions of the Kyiv regime were not just coordinated with its Western curators, but most likely prompted by them,” Zakharova said in a video statement on Sunday. “This is being done in order to push us to launch retaliatory strikes of this kind, and then further spin the anti-Russian hysteria.”

“We have so far refrained from taking such steps, but we will be following developments very closely,” she added.

Some background: The Russian Ministry of Defense accused Ukraine of targeting the city of Belgorod with three Tochka-U missiles and of using drones laden with explosives to hit the Russian city of Kursk on Sunday.

Ukraine has not acknowledged the strikes.

As Russia creeps closer, a group of volunteers awaits them in the forests of eastern Ukraine

From CNN's Mick Krever, Phil Black, Kostyantin Gak, and Richard Harlow in Sloviansk

For just over a month, Maxym and his comrades have been sleeping in earthen dugouts, eating from cans warmed over  campfires , and following news of the  Russian military  advancing just kilometers away.

They're dug deep into this dense eastern Ukrainian forest, not far from Sloviansk, and are part of Ukraine's territorial defense -- non-professional soldiers, most of whom signed up in the opening days of Russia's February invasion.

So far, they have avoided contact with the enemy, whiling away the days beneath camouflage nets, next to giant pyramids of bottled water. But every moment of every day they live with the thud of artillery. Their wooded encampment is regularly showered with cluster munitions. Soon after CNN's visit, a cluster strike heavily wounded some of the soldiers.

Donbas is where the conflict with Russia started in 2014. And after Ukraine routed Russia's attempt to decapitate the government in Kyiv earlier this year, Donbas is once again the center of the war.

Their enemy is advancing, albeit slowly. Further east, Russian forces captured the industrial city of Severodonetsk, and have now taken neighboring Lysychansk -- the last Ukrainian-controlled city in the separatist Luhansk region.

That puts pressure on Ukraine's most important remaining population centers in the Donbas -- Bakhmut, Sloviansk and especially Kramatorsk. The territorial defense unit is just one in a network of corks that the Ukrainian military is using to plug gaps in its defense.

Sloviansk bears the brunt of Russia's advance from the north. To the south, Bakhmut has been paying an even heavier toll.

Read more here.

Hockey player detained in Russia for allegedly evading military service, per reports

From CNN's Homero De la Fuente

Russian goalkeeper Ivan Fedotov was  detained  in St. Petersburg on the request of the military prosecutor's office on Friday for evading military service, according to reports from Russian media outlets.

According to Russian news outlet Fontanka, the military prosecutor's office believes that there are grounds to "consider Fedotov an army evader."

Speaking to Russian state media RIA Novosti, his lawyer Alexey Ponomarev denied that Fedotov had evaded military service.

The 25-year-old Finnish-born Russian signed a one year entry level contract with the NHL's Philadelphia Flyers on May 7, after the conclusion of Russian and Chinese hockey league KHL's season, where he led CSKA Moscow to win the Gagarin Cup.

Fedotov was detained outside the Ice Arena Kupchino in St. Petersburg and was transported to the military registration and enlistment office, where he became ill and had to be transported to the hospital, Fontanka reported.

"We're aware of the reports and are investigating the situation. We have no further comment at this time," Chuck Fletcher, Flyers President of Hockey Operations, said in a statement sent to CNN.

Read the full story here.

School destroyed in attack on Kharkiv

From Oleksandra Ochman

A secondary school in Ukraine’s second largest city was destroyed after it was hit by a Russian missile around 4 a.m. local time, the head of the regional administration, Oleh Synehubov said in a Telegram post on Monday.

“Today at 4 in the morning, the Russian occupiers launched an insidious missile attack on the Shevchenkovsky district of Kharkiv,” Synehubov wrote.

Synehubov added that there were no injuries.

According to Synehubov, there were strikes in other areas of the Kharkiv oblast, with at least three dead and six injured in the village of Bezruky, Dergachi community in Kharkiv region.

Withdrawing from Lysychansk was "difficult" but right decision, says local Ukrainian official

From Yulia Kesaieva and CNN’s Vasco Cotovio

The decision to withdraw from Lysychansk was “very difficult” but it was the right one, considering the losses Ukrainian forces would have incurred if they tried to hold on for additional time, according to the head of the Luhansk region military administration, Serhiy Hayday.

Russia has now taken control of Lysychansk, the last city in the  Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine  that was still under Ukrainian control. Ukraine's military announced Sunday that it had been "forced to withdraw" from the critical city.

“There was a chance to hold Lysychansk for longer, but at what cost? To hold out there for another two weeks? Then Russian troops would have made a breakthrough from the Bilohorivka, Popasna and Komyshuvakha side and encircled our troops in Lysychansk, and we would have lost the whole group,” Hayday told CNN on Monday.

Hayday called for more support from the West, conceding Russia had the advantage in the amount of equipment they were able to field in the area.

“They deployed an incredible amount of military equipment for the assault, there was daily shelling from morning till night and thousands of pieces of equipment, and thousands of new and new cannon fodder brought to their positions,” he said. “Our defenders will continue to fight and we will wait until we receive a sufficient number of foreign weapons to be able to stop the enemy, because, unfortunately, at the moment, the advantage in artillery is simply enormous with the Russians.”

Area held for almost five months: Hayday still commended the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian forces who were able to hold territory in the Donbas for a significant amount of time.

“30% of the oblast was already occupied [before the war], so our military had 70% left to build up a line of defense,” he said. “And it was the right decision -- we’ve been holding it since February 24th, March, April, May, June, now July - for almost five months in a relatively small area.” 

Donbas' remaining cities next target: Hayday went on to say Russia is likely to move towards the remaining cities in the Donetsk oblast still under Ukrainian control, to try and secure the entire Donbas.

“They are eager to reach the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. In order to reach this goal they are incurring incredible, insane losses,” he explained. “They also need some kind of break there in order to catch their breath and raise their reserves somewhere again.”

“And as soon as we leave, they will immediately announce that they are part of the Russian Federation,” he added. “So that when we get enough weapons and start to take our territories back, they will be screaming that Ukraine has attacked Russia.”

Hayday concluded by saying Ukraine would go on to recover any lost territory. “I am absolutely sure we will get Luhansk oblast back,” he said.

Ukraine says after Luhansk, Russia preparing for assault on Donetsk region

From CNN's Yulia Kesaieva

The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said that after taking over the last remaining Ukrainian-controlled city in the Luhansk oblast, Russian forces are preparing to continue their move toward cities in Donetsk still controlled by Kyiv. 

“In the Sloviansk direction, enemy units are trying to establish control over the settlements of Bohorodychne, Mazanivka, and Dolyna through assault operations,” the Ukrainian military said in a status update early on Monday. 

The focus now shifts to the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the two largest population centres in the area. 

“The enemy is regrouping troops to resume the offensive. For this purpose, a battalion tactical group was moved from the district of the city of Izium in the direction of the settlement of Snizhkivka, and additional units of barrel artillery were deployed,” the statement added. 

After taking the city of Lysychansk, Russian forces now control nearly the entirety of the Luhansk oblast, barring a few pockets of resistance. 

The general staff said the Russians were "getting entrenched in the areas of the settlements of Lysychansk and Bilohorivka.” “In the Bakhmut direction, the enemy intensified shelling of the positions of our troops with barrel and rocket artillery along the contact line," it said.

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What Pope Francis’ meeting with a top Orthodox official could signal for Russia-Vatican relations

For the first time since the start of the war in Ukraine on Feb. 24, Pope Francis received in a private audience this morning a top-ranking member of the Russian Orthodox Church, second only to patriarch Kirill of Moscow. He welcomed Metropolitan Antonij [Anthony] of Volokolamsk, the president of the department of external affairs of the Moscow patriarchate, the equivalent of a foreign minister.

The meeting is significant for several reasons. It came at the request of the Patriarchate, according to a Vatican source who wished to remain anonymous, and comes ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Kazakhstan (Sept. 13 to Sept. 15) for the VII Meeting of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions at Nur-Sultan (formerly Astaná), Kazakhstan’s capital. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia will also attend. It is possible that the purpose of the visit is to arrange for a second face-to-face meeting with the patriarch in Nur-Sultan.

The Vatican did not reveal the contents of their conversation; it simply reported in its daily news bulletin that the encounter had taken place. But the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external affairs issued a statement that read:

On August 5, at the invitation of Pope Francis, the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk visited the Vatican, where he met with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Apostolic Palace. During the conversation, which was held in Italian, Pope Francis and Metropolitan Anthony discussed numerous issues on the agenda of Orthodox-Catholic relations, including in the context of political processes taking place in the world.

At the end of the long meeting, the interlocutors exchanged souvenirs.

The first-ever meeting between a pope and an Orthodox patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, since the division between Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054, took place in Havana, Cuba, on Feb. 12, 2016. The two religious leaders were scheduled to meet for a second time in Jerusalem on June 14 this year, but the Vatican canceled this encounter because of Patriarch Kirill’s public support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The patriarch refuses to call it a war, referring to it as “a special military operation.” He sees the invasion as a way to protect Russia and its Orthodox believers against a decadent West.

It is possible that the purpose of the visit is to arrange for a second face-to-face meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill at the VII Meeting of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Kazakhstan.

Pope Francis, on the other hand, has spoken out more than 70 times against this “senseless war,” without ever blaming President Vladimir Putin directly so as to keep open the door for a possible mediation. He has repeatedly expressed his closeness to the “martyred people of the Ukraine,” called for a ceasefire and negotiated peace, and said he wants to visit Kyiv, a visit that could happen soon .

The pope and patriarch also held a 40-minute virtual meeting over Zoom on March 16, during which the patriarch sought to justify the war against Ukraine. The pope pushed back, however, by emphasizing that as religious leaders, they are called to work for peace and not to be “state officials.” He called on the patriarch not to be “the acolyte of Putin.” The pope made his remarks known in a press conference, something that did not go over well with the patriarchate.

This week’s meeting was Metropolitan Antonij’s first visit to the Vatican as the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign minister. Last June, he replaced Metropolitan Hilarion, who had held the number two position in the Russian church from 2009 to 2022 but was removed unexpectedly and reassigned to be Metropolitan of Budapest, Hungary, reportedly because he disagreed with Kirill over the war in Ukraine. It is well known that Kirill’s support for the invasion and the war has created deep divisions within the Orthodox world, and especially in Ukraine, and it has been strongly criticized throughout most of the Christian world.

Pope Francis has spoken out more than 70 times against this “senseless war,” without ever blaming President Vladimir Putin directly so as to keep open the door for a possible mediation.

Before meeting Pope Francis, Metropolitan Antonij met his Vatican counterpart, the English archbishop Paul Gallagher. They reportedly met for just under one hour, but no details of their conversation have been released by the Vatican. Archbishop Gallagher had visited the Kremlin before the war started, at the invitation of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. The archbishop also visited Kyiv in May at the invitation of the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba. There he described Russia as “the aggressor” and said the Holy See supports “the territorial integrity”of Ukraine, positions clearly not shared by the patriarchate.

The visit of Metropolitan Antonij to Pope Francis is significant for other reasons, too. It could not have happened at this time without the approval of President Putin. As David Nazar, S.J., the rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, explained in an interview with America on March 17 , “the Russian Orthodox Church…like everything else in Russia, is under the thumb of the government. To explain this simply, I sometimes say that if Putin says something on Tuesday, the Russian Patriarch has to say the same thing on Wednesday but just putting the word ‘God’ into the sentence.”

The question that arises from today’s meeting is, if President Putin would want Patriarch Kirill to meet Pope Francis in Kazakhstan, why at this time? Is it an attempt to neutralize or stop Francis speaking out against the war, or to show the world that Russia retains good relations with the Vatican?

Pope Francis has stated publicly that he would like to visit Moscow to speak to the Russian president, even before visiting Kyiv, in an effort to bring an end to the war, but so far Putin has shown no desire to invite him.

Reuters reports that Bulat Sarsenbayev, the head of the Kazakh organization hosting the congress, told the Astana Times that Kirill has confirmed his presence there. A senior Vatican source, who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told America that the two religious leaders were likely to meet in Nur-Sultan since they would both be present at that event. But whether they would meet in a private, face-to-face meeting was something yet to be decided.

Today’s meeting is also significant because it comes on the eve of Pope Francis’ meeting with Andril Yurash, the Ukrainian ambassador to the Holy See tomorrow morning on Aug. 6, during which they are expected to discuss his potential trip to Kyiv.

Gerard O’Connell is America ’s Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History . He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.

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Which countries will Pope Francis visit in 2022?

By Courtney Mares

Vatican City, Jan 5, 2022 / 13:00 pm

As the new year begins amid a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases in many parts of the world, Pope Francis has no official international trips confirmed for 2022. But he has expressed an interest in visiting several countries in the new year.

At the age of 85, however, it is unlikely that the pope will resume the grueling travel schedule that characterized his pre-pandemic papacy.

Pope Francis has already traveled to more than 50 countries during his almost nine-year pontificate, 11 of which he visited in 2019.

After the outbreak of COVID-19 put his papal travel schedule on hold for more than a year, Francis made history as the first pope to visit Iraq when he resumed international travel in March 2021.

This was followed by apostolic journeys to Greece , Cyprus , Slovakia , and Budapest for the International Eucharistic Congress.

However, there are still some canceled papal trips originally planned for 2020 that could be rescheduled for this year.

The following are places Pope Francis has expressed interest in visiting at some point during his pontificate.

The Vatican announced last fall that Pope Francis is willing to visit Canada as part of the local Catholic bishops’ “pastoral process of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.”

This potential papal trip to North America will likely occur sometime after the pope receives a delegation of Indigenous leaders from Canada at the Vatican. Their visit was originally scheduled for December 2021 but rescheduled for “the earliest opportunity in 2022” due to concerns about the omicron variant.

Papua New Guinea and East Timor

In an interview with Télam, Argentina’s national news agency, published last October, Pope Francis said that he would like to make trips to Papua New Guinea and East Timor, which had been planned for late 2020 before they were canceled because of the pandemic.

The canceled 2020 trip (never confirmed by the Vatican) was also expected to include a visit to Indonesia. Vatican sources have told ACI Stampa , CNA’s Italian-language news partner, that a papal stop in Singapore could also be added on to the Oceania trip.

Both Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki, the Latin Rite archbishop of Lviv, western Ukraine, have made it known that the pope promised them a visit in 2022.

Nothing has been confirmed, but the trip could take place in May, according to ACI Stampa. Shevchuk said in December that “this has not yet been announced, but we are already living in anticipation and preparation.”

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On his return flight from Iraq, Pope Francis reaffirmed his desire to visit Lebanon. A few months later, a Vatican official said that the pope intended to travel to Lebanon once it successfully formed a government.

The formation of a Lebanese government last September after 13 months of political stalemate therefore paved the way for a potential papal visit. Pope Francis met with Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the new leader of the country in crisis, on Nov. 25, but no further details about a papal trip to the country have been released yet.

Pope Francis has repeatedly said that he plans to go back to Hungary after his visit to Budapest in 2021 lasted for only seven hours.

The apostolic journey to Hungary is expected to take place in September, according to ACI Stampa, which has reported that the pope has already told the abbot of Pannonhalma Archabbey that he intends to visit the 1,000-year-old Benedictine abbey.

Hungary could also serve as a potential neutral meeting point for a papal meeting with Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, ACI Stampa reported.

(Story continues below)

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Kazakhstan is another country that could serve as a location for the second meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill. There is already an interreligious meeting scheduled to take place on Sept. 14-15, 2022. The Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, in which Kirill is expected to participate, will be held in the capital of Kazakhstan, Nur-Sultan.

The ambassador of Kazakhstan to the Holy See told EWTN in 2020 that there were “high hopes” that Pope Francis would visit Kazakhstan to take part in the interreligious congress.

The pope could visit Santiago de Compostela as the Spanish pilgrimage site, the end of the famed Camino de Santiago, continues to celebrate a Holy Year throughout 2022. Benedict XVI visited Santiago de Compostela during its last Holy Year in 2010.

Archbishop Julián Barrio Barrio of Santiago de Compostela told journalists in December that he believes that “the pope is interested in coming to Santiago,” but it may not be possible due to the pandemic, according to Rome Reports .

The Vatican had announced in February 2020 that Pope Francis would visit Malta for the feast of Pentecost before the Mediterranean island nation went into lockdown and the trip was canceled. The visit could be rescheduled for sometime after Easter, according to ACI Stampa.

A papal trip to the Balkan country of Montenegro was also planned for 2020 and canceled. The Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Dritan Abazović traveled to the Vatican and reinvited the pope to visit Montenegro at the end of the general audience on Dec. 29.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Pope Francis said in an interview published this fall that he hoped to visit the Congo in 2022. He told Télam in October: “For the moment I have in my mind two trips that I have not started yet, and those are the Congo and Hungary.”

This would be the pope’s first visit to the African continent since 2019. According to ACI Stampa, the potential trip to the DRC could be a stop during a long-awaited papal trip to neighboring South Sudan, which has been postponed repeatedly due to security concerns.

The only officially confirmed papal trip for 2022 so far is that Pope Francis will travel north to the Italian city of Florence on Feb. 27 to speak at a meeting of bishops and mayors of the Mediterranean region.

Given the pope’s age and ongoing pandemic situation, perhaps there will be more shorter trips like this in the new year.

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Pope: Holy See ready to facilitate exchange of Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war

By Linda Bordoni

Pope Francis has again appealed for a “general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine.”

Speaking during the Regina Caeli on Ascension Sunday, the Pope noted that his appeal falls on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Risen Lord “who wants us to be free, and who sets us free.”

He went on to assure all parties involved that the Holy See remains ready to facilitate every effort in this regard, especially for those who are seriously wounded and sick.”

And he renewed his constant appeal for prayers for peace: “Let us continue to pray for peace, in Ukraine, in Palestine, in Israel, in Myanmar… let us pray for peace!” he said.

Past prisoner exchanges

So far, Russia and Ukraine have conducted over 50 prisoner exchanges since the beginning of the war, involving several thousand prisoners whom both sides have released.

Last January, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned that some 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been liberated following these agreements.

Papal appeals

As Pope Francis himself said, he has raised an appeal to this effect on many and various occasions.

During his “Urbi et Orbi” address this Easter, on March 31st: " My thoughts go especially to the victims of the many conflicts worldwide, beginning with those in Israel and Palestine, and in Ukraine. May the risen Christ open a path of peace for the war-torn peoples of those regions.  In calling for respect for the principles of international law, I express my hope for a general exchange of all prisoners between Russia and Ukraine: all for the sake of all”!

Just last month during his General Audience on April 17 th , he said: " And our thoughts, at this moment, [the thoughts] of all of us, go to the peoples at war. Let us think of the Holy Land, of Palestine, of Israel. We think of Ukraine, martyred Ukraine. Let us think of the prisoners of war... May the Lord move wills so they may all be freed. And speaking of prisoners, those who are tortured come to mind. The torture of prisoners is a horrible thing. It is not human. Let us think of so many kinds of torture that wound the dignity of the person, and of so many tortured people... May the Lord help everyone and bless everyone."

A constant commitment

And during a meeting with Jesuits in September 2022 when he travelled to Kazakhstan, the Holy Father spoke about his commitment towards the liberation of prisoners saying: "Some Ukrainian envoys came to me. Among them, the vice-rector of the Catholic University of Ukraine, accompanied by the advisor for religious affairs of the President, an evangelical. We talked, discussed. A military leader who deals with prisoner exchanges also came, always with the religious advisor of President Zelensky. This time they brought me a list of over 300 prisoners. They asked me to do something to facilitate an exchange. I immediately called the Russian ambassador to see if something could be done, if a prisoner exchange could be expedited."

Pope Francis has also entrusted Cardinal Matteo Zuppi with undertaking humanitarian missions to war-torn nations and tasked him, amongst other responsibilities, with focusing on the exchange of prisoners and the repatriation of Ukrainian children from Russia.

Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee

The just-proclaimed Bull of Indiction of the 2025 Jubilee contains an urgent call to provide hope to those who live in difficult conditions: "During the Holy Year, we are called to be tangible signs of hope for those of our brothers and sisters who experience hardships of any kind. I think of  prisoners  who, deprived of their freedom, daily feel the harshness of detention and its restrictions, lack of affection and, in more than a few cases, lack of respect for their persons. I propose that in this Jubilee Year governments undertake initiatives aimed at restoring hope; forms of amnesty or pardon (...) In every part of the world, believers, and their Pastors in particular, should be one in demanding dignified conditions for those in prison, respect for their human rights...“

Appeal of the Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

In his message for Easter according to the Julian calendar, celebrated on 5 May, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, reiterated the Pope's appeal: "The words of Pope Francis regarding the exchange of all for all, expressed during the Latin rite Easter, have left a deep mark in the hearts of Christians both in Ukraine and in Russia. Today, more than ever, we not only want to hear the words and the appeal of Pope Francis, but we want his words on the 'all for all' exchange to become for us an imperative, a call to concrete actions."

In particular, the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Galicia requested the release of three categories of prisoners of war: military women, healthcare workers, and also captured priests. He recalled that currently about eight thousand military personnel and around 1,600 Ukrainian civilians are detained in Russia.

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Zelensky says ‘peace plan must be Ukrainian’ after meeting Pope Francis

ROME — Any peace plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine “must be Ukrainian,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday after meeting privately with Pope Francis at the Vatican — remarks that suggested there was some daylight between the two leaders over how to resolve the grinding conflict.

Zelensky is in Europe this weekend rallying allies ahead of a planned counteroffensive on the battlefield. He first met with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, both of whom reiterated Italy’s support for Ukraine.

Meloni has remained a staunch supporter of Kyiv, even as her far-right ruling coalition is divided on the issue and polls show a plurality of Italians are against sending weapons to Ukraine.

Zelensky thanked Meloni for her support — and in a statement following his meeting with the pope, he said he was grateful for Francis’s “personal attention to the tragedy of millions of Ukrainians.”

The two men met for 40 minutes on Saturday in their first tête-à-tête since Russia’s invasion. Francis, who has blamed both Russia and NATO for the war, has sought to position himself as a peace broker between Moscow and Kyiv.

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But in an interview with Italy’s state broadcaster, Zelensky made clear that any role the Vatican plays in ending the war must be in service of Ukraine’s peace formula. Zelensky wants all Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia returned to Kyiv’s control.

“It was an honor to meet the pope, but the peace plan must be Ukrainian,” he told television channel Rai 1. “Pope Francis and I talked about it because we are interested in involving the Vatican and Italy.”

In his statement, Zelensky also said he spoke to the pope about the thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly deported to Russia — and asked the pontiff to condemn alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, “because there can be no equality between the victim and the aggressor.”

The Vatican gave a more muted account of the meeting, focusing instead on what it said was the pope’s “constant prayers” for an end to the war. The statement made no mention of peace talks or alleged Russian war crimes. Francis, it said, emphasized the importance of protecting “innocent victims of the conflict” in Ukraine.

A separate statement from the Holy See, however, said Zelensky and Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, the Vatican’s top diplomat, discussed “the need to continue efforts to achieve peace.”

Francis has frequently called for an end to the war since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, voicing solidarity with Ukrainians and recognizing their suffering. In August, he warned that fighting around Zaporizhzhia could lead to “nuclear disaster.”

He also told reporters in late April that there was “a mission going on now” to reach a peace deal “but it is not public yet.” “When it is public, I will talk about it,” he said.

The remarks appeared to take Moscow and Kyiv by surprise, with both governments denying they knew about the effort.

Some analysts question whether there is a viable mediator role for the Vatican in a part of the world dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Francis has appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a meeting — so far, to no avail. And although the pope has sharpened his rhetoric during the course of the war, Ukrainians have at times accused Francis of creating false equivalencies.

The pope faced blowback in the first months after the invasion for not calling out Putin as the aggressor while criticizing Western sanctions and defense spending. In an interview with an Italian newspaper a year ago, he appeared to echo a Kremlin talking point, describing the “ barking of NATO at Russia’s door .”

In August, when a car bomb in a Moscow suburb killed Darya Dugina, a pro-war commentator and daughter of a prominent ultranationalist, Francis referred to her as an innocent victim of war — a comment that drew ire from Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See.

Andrii Yurash, the ambassador, called the pope’s remarks “disappointing,” adding that a person “can’t speak in same categories about aggressor and victim, rapist and raped.”

Francis adopted a harder line in more recent months. In October, he appealed to Putin to “stop this spiral of violence and death.” In November, he compared the plight of Ukrainians with the “genocide artificially caused by Stalin” in the 1930s, when a Soviet-engineered famine in Ukraine contributed to the death of more than 3 million people.

Marco Politi, a Francis biographer, said the pope has expressed “unambiguous” solidarity with Ukrainians. “But at the same time, the pope has a global vision that stems from the Vatican diplomatic tradition,” he said.

The pope believes the conflict has evolved into “a hybrid war between NATO and Russia — while of course keeping in mind that Putin is responsible,” he added.

For Francis, the war complicates a project that has formed a cornerstone of his papacy: reconciling the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, which split nearly 1,000 years ago. In 2016, Francis met with Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in Cuba as part of a rapprochement driven by shared concerns over violence against Christians in the Middle East.

But during the war in Ukraine, the Russian Orthodox leader has promoted theological justifications for Putin’s actions. In a Zoom call last May, Francis warned Kirill against becoming “ Putin’s altar boy .”

Yurash, the Ukrainian ambassador, said the Vatican has consistently said it wishes to be involved in any peace negotiation, part of why the pope wanted to keep “bridges” and “lines” open to Russia, the New York Times reported .

The pope has previously called on Zelensky to “be open” to serious peace proposals. Zelensky told Rai 1 on Saturday that he would not talk to Putin, because “Putin could take diplomatic steps, but believe me, a year later he would start killing again.”

Francis, meanwhile, believes a “new Helsinki” represents the best resolution to the conflict, Politi said, referring to the 1975 Helsinki Accords, signed by Western countries and the Soviet Union in a bid to de-escalate Cold War tensions in Europe and recognize the post-World War II status quo on the continent.

“I think that the Vatican is aware that it doesn’t have the power to impose any mediation” between Russia and Ukraine, Politi said. “It never had that in the past, and it doesn’t have it today. The Vatican makes itself available, should key players want to make use of the Vatican channel.”

Parker reported from Washington. Loveday Morris in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Holy Year or holy mess, Vatican and Rome begin dash to 2025 Jubilee with papal bull, construction

Pope Francis presides over the second vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica on Ascension Day, Thursday, May 9, 2024, after reading the papal bull ‘Spes non confundit’ (Latin for, hope does not disappoint), the official decree establishing the Catholic Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis arrives to preside over the second vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica on Ascension Day, Thursday, May 9, 2024, after reading the papal bull ‘Spes non confundit’ (Latin for, hope does not disappoint), the official decree establishing the Catholic Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

A deacon brings the papal robe for Pope Francis who will preside over the second vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica on Ascension Day, Thursday, May 9, 2024, after reading the papal bull ‘Spes non confundit’ (Latin for, hope does not disappoint), the official decree establishing the Catholic Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

General view of the construction site of a major underground hub in central Piazza Venezia in Rome, Thursday, May 9, 2024. The Vatican crosses a key milestone Thursday in the runup to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year. For the next four years at least, central Piazza Venezia and its Imperial Forum-flanked boulevard to the Colosseum are scheduled to be congested and blighted by giant, 14-meter (yard) high green silos that are needed for the subway drilling operation under way. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pilgrims crowd St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Saturday, May 30, 1998, on Pentecost Day. The Vatican crosses a key milestone Thursday, May 9, 2024, in the run-up to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Live signals from the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the surrounding streets are seen in the control room at the municipal police headquarters in Rome, Wednesday, April 6, 2005. The Vatican crosses a key milestone Thursday, May 9, 2024, in the run-up to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans. (AP Photo/Corrado Giambalvo)

Tourists approaching the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Basilica Saturday, July 11, 1998, walk through street works. The Vatican crosses a key milestone Thursday, May 9, 2024, in the run-up to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans. (AP Photo/Massimo Sambucetti)

People gather at the Fori Imperiali avenue, with the Colosseum in the background, during an event celebrating the ban on private vehicles, in Rome, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2013. The Vatican crosses a key milestone Thursday, May 9, 2024, in the run-up to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year: a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

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VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican crossed a key milestone Thursday in the runup to its 2025 Jubilee with the promulgation of the official decree establishing the Holy Year. It’s a once-every-quarter-century event that is expected to bring some 32 million pilgrims to Rome and has already brought months of headaches to Romans.

Pope Francis presided over a ceremony in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica for the reading of the papal bull, or official edict, that laid out his vision for a year of hope: He asked for gestures of solidarity for the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.

“Hope is needed by God’s creation, gravely damaged and disfigured by human selfishness,” Francis said in a vigil service afterward. “Hope is needed by those peoples and nations who look to the future with anxiety and fear.”

The pomp-filled event, attended by cardinals, bishops and ordinary faithful, kicked off the final seven-month dash of preparations and public works projects to be completed by Dec. 24, when Francis opens the basilica’s Holy Door and formally inaugurates the Jubilee.

In a novelty, Francis announced in the papal bull that he would also open a Holy Door in a prison “as a sign inviting prisoners to look to the future with hope and a renewed sense of confidence.”

For the Vatican, the Holy Year is a centuries-old tradition of the faithful making pilgrimages to Rome to visit the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul, and receiving indulgences for the forgiveness of their sins in the process. For the city of Rome, it’s a chance to take advantage of some 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion) in public funds to carry out long-delayed projects to lift the city out of years of decay and neglect.

Live signals from the Vatican, St. Peter’s Basilica, and the surrounding streets are seen in the control room at the municipal police headquarters in Rome, Wednesday, April 6, 2005. (AP Photo/Corrado Giambalvo)

“In a beautiful city, you live better,” said the Vatican’s Jubilee point-person, Archbishop Renato Fisichella, who himself is not indifferent to the added bonus of Jubilee funding. “Rome will become an even more beautiful city, because it will be ever more at the service of its people, pilgrims and tourists who will come.”

Pope Boniface VIII declared the first Holy Year in 1300, and now they are held every 25 years. While Francis called an interim one devoted to mercy in 2015 , the 2025 edition is the first big one since St. John Paul II’s 2000 Jubilee, when he ushered the Catholic Church into the third millennium.

As occurred in the runup to 2000, pre-Jubilee public works projects have overwhelmed Rome, with flood-lit construction sites operating around the clock, entire swaths of central boulevards rerouted and traffic snarling the city’s already clogged streets.

The Tiber riverfront for much of the city center is now off limits as work crews create new parks. Piazzas are being repaved, bike paths charted and 5G cells built. The aim is to bring the Eternal City up to par with other European capitals and take advantage of the 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in special Jubilee funding and some 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) more in other public and post-pandemic EU funds that are available.

“It’s really putting our patience to the test,” said Tiziana Cafini, who operates a tobacco shop near the Pantheon and says she has taken to walking to work rather than riding a bus into the city center because it gets stuck in traffic. “And it’s not just in the center. There are an infinite number of construction sites all around Rome.”

Though she knows the discomfort will be worth it in the end, the end is still pretty far off. In addition to the Jubilee construction, there’s a longer-term, separate project to extend Rome’s Metro C subway line into Rome’s historic center which has encountered years of delays thanks to archaeological excavations of ancient Roman ruins that must be completed first.

For the next four years at least, central Piazza Venezia and its Imperial Forum-flanked boulevard to the Colosseum are scheduled to be congested and blighted by giant, 14-meter (yard) high green silos that are needed for the subway drilling operation.

“We’re upset, but we’re Romans, we’ll make do,” Cafini said.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said recently he was satisfied with the pace of the Jubilee works so far, noting that they got off to a months-delayed start due to the 2022 collapse of Premier Mario Dragi’s government.

But Gualtieri promised they would be completed on time. And in a nod to Romans and tourists who have suffered from the traffic chaos and acute shortage of taxis already, he promised that an extra 1,000 taxi licenses had been approved and would be in use by December.

Yet as of late last month, only two of the 231 city projects had been completed; 57 were under way and another 44 were expected to be started by the end of May, Gualtieri told reporters. Another 18 are up for bids, seven have been assigned, 90 are planned. Thirteen have been canceled.

“We have recovered a lot from the initial delay,” Gualtieri told the foreign press association, adding that he expected the “essential” projects to be completed on time. Other projects were always planned to take longer than the Jubilee but were lumped into the overall project to take advantage of the accelerated timeframe.

The most significant project, and one that has caused the greatest traffic disruption to date, is a new Vatican-area piazza and pedestrian zone connecting Castel St. Angelo with the Via della Conciliazione boulevard that leads to St. Peter’s Square.

Previously, a major thoroughfare divided the two landmarks, causing an unsightly and pedestrian-unfriendly barrier.

The new works call for a tunnel to divert the oncoming traffic underneath the new pedestrian piazza. But that project required re-routing and replacing a huge underground sewage system first, which has only recently been completed. Now crews are working through the night to try to complete the tunnel in time.

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Orthodox Patriarch Anticipates Pope Francis Visit to Turkey for Council of Nicaea Anniversary

Next year marks the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, the first ecumenical council in the Church.

Pope Francis might be traveling to Turkey next year for the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea , according to Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew in comments he made on Thursday.

Although the Holy See has not confirmed any travel plans, the ecumenical patriarch told a group of reporters that a committee is being established to organize a visit, according to the Orthodox Times . The referenced council took place in the ancient city of Nicaea in A.D. 325 in the former Roman Empire, which is now the present-day city of İznik in Turkey.

“His Holiness Pope Francis wishes for us to jointly celebrate this important anniversary,” Bartholomew said.

The Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical council in the Church. It is accepted by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and other Christian communities that accept the validity of early church councils. It predates the Chalcedonian Schism — which separated the Oriental Orthodox communion from Rome — by more than 100 years and predates the Great Schism — which separated the Eastern Orthodox Church from Rome — by more than 700 years.

During the council, the bishops condemned the heresy of Arianism , which asserted that the Son was created by the Father. Arius, a priest who faced excommunication for propagating the heresy, did not accept that the Son was coeternal with the Father.

According to the council, Jesus Christ is “begotten; not made” and is “of the same substance with the Father.” It affirms that the Son is coeternal with the Father and condemns any heresies that assert “the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change” and heresies that assert “there was a time when [Christ] was not [in existence].”

The council was convened by Emperor Constantine the Great, who is venerated as a saint in some Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox traditions.

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Pope Francis to visit Turkey next year, Ecumenical Patriarch says

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Reporting by Catarina Demony in Lisbon and Alvise Armellini in Rome; Editing by Timothy Heritage

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Russian officials said on Sunday that Ukraine fired nine U.S. ATACMS at Crimea and attacked Russian regions with at least 60 drones in a major attack which forced one oil refinery in southern Russia to halt operations.

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Ukraine war latest: Two killed in strike on Kherson; Ukraine accuses Russia of targeting civilians in 'potential war crime'

Two people were killed in air strikes in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, while an attack on a residential area in Kharkiv left six civilians injured - with Ukraine saying it is investigating the bombing as a potential war crime.

Sunday 19 May 2024 09:42, UK

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• Two killed in Russian strikes on Kherson
• Ukraine investigating 'potential war crime' after civilians wounded
• Ukrainian soldiers reveal how they were secretly moved ahead of Russian invasion
• Russia takes control of village in Kharkiv - defence ministry
• Ukraine's divisive draft law comes into force | At least 30 Ukrainians have died crossing river to avoid
• Live reporting by  Josephine Franks

Ukrainian forces have destroyed Russian Black Sea fleet minesweeper, a statement from the Ukrainian navy said.

"Last night the Ukrainian Defence Forces destroyed the Russian Black Sea Fleet's Project 266-M Kovrovets minesweeper," it said on Telegram.

As Russia’s new invasion of northern Ukraine ticks into its second week, Trevor Philips asks Defence Secretary Grant Shapps if we are creating a stalemate in the war with Russia.

It comes after Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week: "We are in a nonsense situation where the West is afraid that Russia will lose the war. And it does not want Ukraine to lose it."

Grant Shapps says he went to Ukraine earlier this year and made the point that "by delaying what we should be doing - and in fact now have, through particularly what [the US] Congress has done - we are running the risk of doing exactly what President Zelensky is concerned about".

He goes on: "I think this is completely nonsensical for the West. We have to understand we are in an existential battle about the way we run the world order and about democracy itself."

He accuses autocratic countries of trying to "impose" their systems on "free and democratic countries", declaring: "We have to stand up to that."

Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Philips, Grant Shapps says the delay in giving aid to Ukraine gave Russia a window of opportunity for its new offensive. 

"It is [a] fact that the delay in sending additional aid [to Ukraine] - and here, obviously, the United States Congress was slow on this - had left a hiatus in which, for example, Putin has moved into, or tried to move into Kharkiv."

He says he is "confident" Ukraine will be able to repel the attack, but says there are a "few difficult weeks ahead".

"But that didn't need to happen," he adds.

Mr Shapps also says "Europeans have to step up as well", calling for other European countries to commit to spending 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence, which the government has said it will do by 2030.

He would not be drawn on whether the UK should change its rules to allow missiles provided by the UK to be used in Russian territory. 

Mr Shapps instead called for Germany and other countries to allow the weapons they provide to be used in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. 

Six drones crashed on the site of an oil refinery in Slavyansk in Russia's southern Krasnodar region during an overnight attack by Ukraine, according to the Interfax news agency.

The Russian defence ministry said Russian forces shot down nine US long-range missiles over Crimea and at least 60 drones over Russian sovereign territory. 

Interfax said the refinery halted work after the attack.

There were no fires at the refinery, state-run TASS news agency reported, citing local authorities. 

Russia has reported an uptick in Ukrainian attacks on its territory since opening a new front in the Kharkiv region earlier this month.

Members of a Ukrainian brigade have described how they were secretly relocated to help defend a section of the country's border with Russia a few days before a new invasion began.

One commander told Sky News how his guns were even firing at Russian troops who were "brazenly" amassing on the Russian side of the border some 24 hours prior to the incursion into Kharkiv.

"We were hitting tanks on the border… it was already a real war," said Sasha, 26, who uses the callsign "black".

The comments offer a sense of how Ukraineattempted - ahead of time - to scramble forces to counter a Russian build-up along its long, northeastern border.

Read more below from Sky News' Defence and Security Editor Deborah Haynes...

Two people died and two more were injured in Russian airstrikes on the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, Ukrainian officials say. 

Kherson governor Oleksandr Prokudin said residential areas of the city were hit and a high-rise building and eight homes were damaged. 

It comes as Ukrainian prosecutors say they are investigating Russia for a "potential war crime" over claims it targeted residential areas - something Moscow denies. 

A Russian air strike on a residential area of Kharkiv is being investigated by Ukrainian prosecutors as a potential war crime after six civilians were wounded.

Among the injured were three children, aged eight, 13 and 16.

Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians but thousands have been killed and injured since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

About 45 miles to the northeast in Vovchansk, a city three miles from the Russian border, prosecutors said Russian shelling killed a 60-year-old woman and injured three other civilians.

A 59-year-old man was also injured in the village of Ukrainske, they said.

Meanwhile in Russia late on Saturday, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone attack injured a woman and a man in the village of Petrovka.

They were treated for shrapnel injuries, he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

Moscow's defence ministry said its forces shot down a Tochka-U missile fired by Ukraine into Belgorod.

A similar missile caused a Belgorod apartment building to collapse last week, killing at least 15 people, Russia said.

Ukraine's forces have destroyed all 37 attack drones launched by Russia overnight, according to Ukraine's Air Force chief.

"As a result of the anti-aircraft battle, all 37 'Shaheds' were shot down in Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Cherkasy and Kherson regions," the commander said. 

Sky News could not independently verify the report. 

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Yesterday, Russia claimed to have taken control of the village Starytsia in Ukraine's Kharkiv region. 

It came after the Russian defence ministry said it had taken control of 12 settlements in Kharkiv in the space of a week on Friday. 

Yesterday also saw laws overhauling how army mobilisation works in Ukraine came into force. 

The legislation, which was watered down from its original draft, will make it easier to identify every conscript in the country.

We'll be bringing you all the live updates throughout the day but,  before we do, here's a reminder of the other key events from the last 24 hours: 

• A Russian Su-25 attack plane was shot down over Donetsk, according to a Ukrainian army brigade;
• Poland announced it's aiming to bolster its defences against what it says is a rising threat from Russia and Belarus with a £2bn security programme;
• Volodymyr Zelenskyy snubbed the French president's call for a truce between Russia and Ukraine during the Paris Olympics, saying it could give Russia the upper hand;
• At least 30 people have died trying to escape conscription by crossing a river separating Ukraine from neighbouring Romania and Hungary, the Ukrainian border service said;
• Russian forces launched drone attacks on two energy facilities in Ukraine, according to the country's grid operator Ukrenergo.

We're pausing our coverage of the Ukraine war for the moment.

Scroll through the blog below to catch up on today's developments.

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The Vatican’s Gamble With Beijing Is Costing China’s Catholics

In trying to hold the Church together, Pope Francis has compromised on religious freedom.

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Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

Updated at 9:47 a.m. ET on May 14, 2024

N o pope has ever set foot in China , but 10 years ago, Francis came the closest. On a flight to South Korea in August 2014, he became the first Vicar of Christ to enter Chinese airspace. Apparently that wasn’t enough. “Do I want to go to China?” Francis mused a few days later to those of us journalists accompanying him on his flight back to Rome. “Of course: Tomorrow!”

Francis has been more conciliatory to the People’s Republic than any of his predecessors. His approach has brought some stability to the Church in China, but it has also meant accepting restrictions on the religious freedom of Chinese Catholics and undermining the Vatican’s credibility as a champion of the oppressed. Francis sees himself as holding the Chinese Church together; he might be helping to stifle it in the process.

That trade-off becomes apparent when comparing the two major groups that make up China’s estimated 10 million Catholics. One is the state-controlled Church, overseen by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which has a long history of appointing bishops without the Vatican’s approval—a nightmare for popes because it presents the danger of a schism. In 2018, Francis mitigated that threat by negotiating an agreement in which the Chinese government and the Vatican cooperate on the appointment of bishops. The details of the pact, which is up for renewal in the fall, remain secret, but the pope has said it gives him final say. In return, the Vatican promised not to authorize any bishop that Beijing doesn’t support.

The agreement came at the expense of China’s second group of Catholics: the so-called underground Church, which previously ordained its own bishops with Rome’s approval and is now in effect being told by the Vatican to join the state-controlled Church. The underground community rejects President Xi Jinping’s campaign of “Sinicization,” a program that seeks to reinforce Chinese national identity, in part by demanding that all religious teaching and practice accord with the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Occasionally that means prohibiting religious worship entirely: Shortly before the Vatican and Beijing signed the deal, new legislation went into effect that led to stricter enforcement of such rules as a ban on minors attending Mass. And sometimes Sinicization means muddling Catholic doctrine with CCP dogma. As one priest in the official Church claimed in 2019, “The Ten Commandments and the core socialist values are the same.”

Whether the Chinese Church can remain authentically Catholic in the face of Sinicization is an open question. That Francis came to terms with the government just as the program intensified felt to some underground Catholics like a betrayal, a sign that he might tolerate the continued compromising of their faith. He accommodates Beijing in order to stabilize the Church in China, but Chinese authorities aren’t interested in the faith that Francis professes. They’ve made clear that they want a Church that submits to the state; such a Church might be stable, but would it be Catholic?

John L. Allen Jr.: Why Pope Francis isn’t with the West on Ukraine

Safeguarding orthodox Catholicism in China depends on whether Francis and his successors can strike the right balance between cooperation and confrontation. The Vatican must cultivate greater influence in Beijing while also defending the faith—a daunting challenge for even the canniest diplomat.

T he past six years make clear that the agreement on bishops has largely been a disappointment. Even some in the Vatican concede that it hasn’t lived up to expectations. “We would have liked to see more results,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s equivalent of a foreign minister, told America magazine in 2022. (The Vatican declined to comment for this article.) Only nine bishops have been consecrated under the agreement, and some 40 dioceses still have no leader. In the meantime, Beijing is happy to leave those dioceses under the administration of mere priests, Father Gianni Criveller, the editorial director of the Catholic publication AsiaNews , told me. Because bishops possess greater authority, they are harder for the government to control.

The agreement has yielded three new bishops in the past six months—the first new ones since 2021—but little else suggests much improvement in the relationship between the Vatican and China. Formal diplomatic relations remain a distant prospect, and China has rebuffed the Vatican’s proposal for a permanent representative office in Beijing, according to a Vatican official with knowledge of the talks, who described them on the condition of anonymity. The latest “Five-Year Plan for the Sinicization of Catholicism in China,” adopted by the government-controlled Church in December, makes no reference to the Vatican or the pope.

Still, the Vatican achieved its primary goal of reducing the risk of schism. “The aim is the unity of the Church,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, defending the agreement in 2020. “All the bishops in China are in communion with the pope. There are no more illegitimate bishops.” Unity, in this case, means integrating China’s underground clergy into Beijing’s state-recognized hierarchy. In other words, Chinese Catholicism will be more and more controlled by the government, an undesirable outcome for Francis but one that he’s apparently willing to bear.

Some see that calculation as prudent. Francesco Sisci, a Sinologist and an expert on Vatican-China relations, told me that if the Vatican continued cooperating with the underground Church and holding the CCP at a distance, “you have to wait for the current power to fall, and who knows if the new power will be better than the old? In my opinion, the choice to go underground is much riskier.” As Richard Madsen, a professor emeritus of sociology at UC San Diego, put it to me, the agreement on bishops “gives a certain stability to the Church … so that in the long run it can develop and flourish.”

But Catholicism in China certainly doesn’t seem to be flourishing now. As Fenggang Yang, a sociology professor at Purdue University, told me, the Vatican’s conciliatory approach has demoralized Chinese Catholics. The agreement has put greater pressure on the underground churches to join the official Church, he noted, reducing their freedom to evangelize. The Vatican knew this was coming. In 2023, Archbishop Gallagher said that the deal “was always going to be used by the Chinese party to bring greater pressure on the Catholic community, particularly on the so-called underground Church.” Still, he defended the agreement, calling it “what was possible at the time.” Not all Chinese Christians are having such difficulty; Yang said that the decentralized evangelical Protestant “house churches” have continued to grow despite repression.

Read: For Xi Jinping, religion is power

History suggests that resistance rather than compromise makes for a vital Church. During the Cold War, the Vatican pursued a policy of accommodation with Communist states in the Soviet bloc, negotiating over the appointment of bishops. But it was in Poland—where the Catholic hierarchy was least cooperative with the authorities, and where an underground Church was strongest—that Catholicism remained most vibrant.

Unlike Poland, China has only a small Catholic minority. But even there, the more uncompromising and persecuted portion of the faithful—the underground Church—has the higher morale, Criveller told me. “Those in the official Church are theoretically freer because they do not have to worship in secret, but in fact all their initiatives must be approved and agreed on with the officials in charge of religious affairs,” he said. “They are more easily discouraged.” Criveller noted that many Catholics in the state-controlled Church lose respect for bishops and clergy who are seen as “too aligned with government policy.” Ceding ground to Beijing might limit oppression, but it can weaken the authority of the Church.

T he pope’s willingness to negotiate the 2018 agreement reflects two central features of his pontificate: his multipolar view of the world and his preference for dialogue over confrontation. Francis often flouts the geopolitical consensus of the West, questioning its authority and sympathizing with its adversaries—suggesting, for example, that NATO may have provoked the war in Ukraine by “barking at Russia’s gate.” China’s increasing power, which has so alarmed the West, is for Francis all the more reason to engage the country. While calling for the religious freedom of Christians in China and elsewhere, he also seeks closer ties with the governments that persecute them.

These tendencies have become more pronounced since the deal. The Vatican has grown both more conciliatory toward the state-controlled Church and less supportive of the underground Church. In 2019, the Vatican publicly encouraged underground clergy to comply with the CCP’s demand to register with civil authorities, even though they would be required to sign a statement endorsing the “independence, autonomy and self-administration” of the Church in China. At least 10 underground bishops have refused, according to the Vatican official; one was arrested earlier this year.

In another sign of acquiescence, Rome begrudgingly accepted the decision by Chinese authorities to transfer a bishop to its Shanghai diocese last year without consulting the pope. The bishop, Joseph Shen Bin, is the head of the Chinese bishops’ conference, which the Vatican doesn’t recognize, and an avid proponent of Sinicization. As he recently told an interviewer, “We must adhere to patriotism and love for the Church, uphold the principle of independence and self-management of the Church … and persist in the direction of Sinicization of Catholicism in China. This is the bottom line, no one can violate it, and it is also a high-voltage line, no one should touch it.”

Vatican officials have suggested that Sinicization is akin to the Catholic Church’s long-standing practice of inculturation—that is, presenting the Church’s teachings and practices in the terms of different cultures. But Yang, the Purdue professor, makes a crucial distinction: The goal of Sinicization, he argued in Christianity Today , “is not cultural assimilation but political domestication—to ensure submission to the Chinese Communist party-state.”

Shen Bin is forthright about this. In another recent interview , he stressed that Sinicization means not only adapting liturgy and sacred art to traditional Chinese culture, but also interpreting Catholic teaching in accordance with Communist doctrine. Sinicization, he said, “should use the core socialist values as guidance to provide a creative interpretation of theological classics and religious doctrines that aligns with the requirements of contemporary China’s development and progress, as well as with China’s splendid traditional culture.” Shen Bin is scheduled to speak next week at an academic conference at the Vatican, alongside the Vatican secretary of state. By accepting the dominance of the official Church, whose bishops Shen Bin leads, Rome is in practice accepting the supremacy of politics over religion.

Another cost of Francis’s overtures has come in the form of his silence about China’s human-rights violations. In July 2020, amid China’s crackdown on prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong, Francis decided not to deliver prepared remarks calling for “nonviolence, and respect for the dignity and rights of all” in the city, and voicing hope that “social life, and especially religious life, may be expressed in full and true freedom.” Vatican diplomats privately expressed puzzlement at the pope’s decision.

Francis has drawn particular criticism for his failure to denounce China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority, whom Beijing has forced into reeducation camps to eradicate their religion and culture—a striking omission given the pope’s emphasis on promoting dialogue with Islam. The most he’s said on the matter came in a book published in 2020, in which he made a brief reference to “the poor Uighurs,” including them in a list of “persecuted peoples.”

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The Vatican’s reluctance to denounce China has also caused tension in its dealings with the United States. In September 2020, then–Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemed to criticize Pope Francis’s relative silence while speaking to an audience in Rome that included the Vatican’s foreign minister. After noting the Vatican’s unique ability to help protect religious freedom in China, he admonished: “Earthly considerations shouldn’t discourage principled stances based on eternal truths.” Sisci, the Sinologist, told me that Pompeo’s comments only helped Francis in his dealing with the Chinese authorities, reassuring them that the pope was not “an instrument of U.S. policy.”

For now, the agreement on bishops is temporary, requiring renewal every two years. This raises the question of what Francis’s successor might do. The next pope likely won’t have his hands tied; he will be free to join the West in taking a more confrontational—or, as Pompeo would have it, principled—tack with China.

Alternatively, he can wait and see if Francis’s approach bears fruit. There’s an old saying that applies to the Church and China in equal measure: They think in centuries. The wait could be a while.