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submitted 2 years ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

The Vatican sought to defend Pope Francis on Tuesday after he sparked fury in Ukraine by praising Russia's imperial rulers — a history President Vladimir Putin has invoked to justify his ongoing war.

The Kremlin delighted in the controversy, which stemmed from comments the pontiff made to a group of young Russian Catholics urging them to see themselves as the heirs of a "great" empire.

"Don’t forget your heritage. You are the descendants of great Russia: the great Russia of saints, rulers, the great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire — educated, great culture and great humanity," he told them in St. Petersburg by live video Friday.

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[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 84 points 2 years ago

No country is great, we're all decadent apes squating in the corpse of our ancestors. We could be great, if we didn't squander all of our time and resources fucking each other.

[-] Seraph@kbin.social 19 points 2 years ago

But... God's on my side not theirs!

[-] chaogomu@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago
[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 2 years ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=RZAq-_gz_W8

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[-] MataVatnik@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago
[-] MBM@lemmings.world 2 points 2 years ago

Were our ancestors any better?

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 4 points 2 years ago

Well, they were sustainable, but no. Not for 300,000 years.

[-] xuxebiko@kbin.social 64 points 2 years ago

Of course, the Pope and Vatican praise imperialism, it probably reminds them of their glory days of the Inquisition They also supported Nazism. They continue to enable and support pedophilia.

Being praised by the Pope & the Vatican is a certificate of being morally corrupt & wrong.

[-] deft@ttrpg.network 4 points 2 years ago

an interesting side to Putin's Russia is his relationship with Christianity in Russia

[-] xuxebiko@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

He uses them to remain in power. They'll do whatever Kirill tells them to, and he knows that the day he stops kowtowing and praising Putin, he'll have a date with a window.

[-] hoshikarakitaridia@sh.itjust.works 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Tbf there is a Russia that's great that is unconnected to the majority of it's leaders.

That said, it's not the one we see today.

[-] JoeCoT@kbin.social 14 points 2 years ago

There just isn't. It was great in the same way the British Empire, the French Empire, the Spanish Empire, the American Empire, were "great". Big? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Forces of mass oppression and murder? Also yes. Praising Imperialists is going to win no favors.

The Bolshevik revolution was a blood bath of royals, but that was because Russia was the only major power to make it out of the revolutions of 1848 without losing their absolute monarchy. Russia still had friggin peasants prior to the Bolsheviks.

If the USSR hadn't gone the route of "permanent revolution" (ie permanent authoritarian government), there could have been a past to look bad fondly on. But instead the boot changed color, and they decided to make their neighbors learn of their peaceful ways, by force.

[-] uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 2 years ago

It was a blood bath of leftists, too. Lennin was intent on creating state management of the factories, and he knew that anyone to the left of the party would oppose this. The first people the bolsheviks went after were menchaviks, anarchists, and socialists.

[-] kaito@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Never a better time to say I'm out of this madness called religion.

[-] Asymptote@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago

What's religion got to do with what he said?

Of anything, he was praising the achievements of the enemies of catholicism in spite of the ancient schism.

[-] sndmn@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

I'm convinced religion is a mental illness, albeit a very common one.

[-] nullPointer@programming.dev 8 points 2 years ago

just stick with encouraging and protecting pedos. its what you are good at.

[-] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The Vatican sought to defend Pope Francis on Tuesday after he sparked fury in Ukraine by praising Russia's imperial rulers — a history President Vladimir Putin has invoked to justify his ongoing war.

The head of Ukraine's Eastern Rite Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said in a statement that the pope's words had caused "great pain and worry" and feared they could "inspire the neo-colonial ambitions of the aggressor country."

“The Pope intended to encourage young people to preserve and promote what is positive in Russia’s great cultural and spiritual heritage, and certainly not to extol imperialistic logics and governmental personalities, cited to point to certain historical periods of reference,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

Putin has frequently mentioned Russia's long imperial past in speeches and essays, often in an attempt to justify his contemporary foreign policy goals.

In June last year, Putin compared himself to the 18th-century tsar, Peter the Great, who expanded his nation's borders by seizing Swedish land and several Baltic states, establishing Russia as a major European empire.

He returned to this theme in a lengthy article prior to his full-scale invasion in 2021, declaring that "Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe."


The original article contains 768 words, the summary contains 205 words. Saved 73%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[-] roguetrick@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Russian Orthodox broke communion with Constantinople over recognizing the autocephaly of churches the Russian one felt it was in charge of (primarily Ukraine). Eastern rite Catholic churches see that schism as an in for themselves. They want to convince Russians they can keep their character while becoming Catholic. It's not actually helpful to Russian nationalists if the Catholics succeed, because they're tied to the Russian Orthodox.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Moscow%E2%80%93Constantinople_schism

[-] hungryphrog 1 points 2 years ago
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
175 points (100.0% liked)

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