"ROME -- Pope Francis praised 18th-century Russian emperors whom President Vladimir Putin has invoked as models for his actions in Ukraine, drawing denunciations from Ukraine's government and the leader of the country's Greek Catholic Church.
On Friday, speaking by video to a gathering of Russian Catholic youth in St. Petersburg, Pope Francis urged them to follow in the path of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, whom he called rulers of a "great, enlightened empire of great culture and great humanity."
The comments on Peter and Catherine, which came at the end of the pope's speech, weren't included in the official transcript released by the Vatican, but were released by the Catholic diocese of Moscow and later in a video from Siberian Catholic television, a church agency.
Putin has cited Peter, who expanded Russian territory and curtailed Ukrainian autonomy, to justify the current events. Putin has used the term Novorossiya, or New Russia, for Russian-populated southern Ukraine -- using a term that dates back to Russia's conquest of southern Ukraine under Catherine in 1764.
Catherine also harbored the Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, during the order's suppression by Rome in the late 18th century.
Pope Francis has frequently decried Ukrainian suffering since the events in February 2022, but he has refrained from explicitly condemning Moscow for them, while suggesting it may have been provoked by the enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe's east.” [1]
1. World News: Pope Lauds Historical Russia Development --- Pontiff praises some czars for their 'great culture and great humanity'. Rocca, Francis X.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 29 Aug 2023: A.18.
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