Pope Francis refers to Dugina as innocent victim
Pope Francis has once again called for an end to the war and commemorated its victims. In his speech he also lamented the death of Russian ultra-nationalist activist Darya Dugina, who was killed by a car bomb on 20 August. Without mentioning her by name, Francis spoke of the "innocent" who are paying for the war.
In Buenos Aires the Soviet Union offered hope
The pope's Argentinean origins obscure his views of Moscow past and present, Rzeczpospolita comments:
“For us in Poland, the US has been an oasis of freedom since the days of aid packages from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, [pro-American writer Leopold] Tyrmand's chequered socks and jazz. For Jorge Bergoglio, the US-backed junta in Argentina was proof of the exact opposite. And that's when you seek help in another part of the world. Help, or just hope. The Soviet Union was able to exploit these South American hopes among churchmen and left-wing oppositionists as well as local entrepreneurs, who feared US domination. And this Cold War investment is bearing unexpected fruits today.”
All moral authority is lost
The current pope has already discredited himself in several areas, laments the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
“His Latin American origins cannot excuse his extensive ignorance of theological tradition, nor his ludicrous statements about economic interrelationships, nor his (ecclesiastical) populist outbursts, nor the crude political alliances that have become the hallmark of Bergoglio's pontificate. To this day, the pope - unlike the World Council of Churches, for example - refuses to call Russia's aggression against Ukraine what the Church's social ethics imperatively demands it be called, namely a war of aggression. ... His moral authority is already lost.”