By Andriy Perun
LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) – Worshippers coming out of a Catholic church service in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on Monday expressed sorrow at the death of Pope Francis, but also lingering hurt that the Roman Catholic pontiff had not taken Ukraine’s side in its war with Russia.
The pontiff was quoted as saying in a 2024 interview with a Swiss broadcaster that Ukraine should have “the courage of the white flag”, and sue for peace to end the conflict with Russia.
Those comments differed sharply from the view held by Ukraine’s government, and its Western allies, that they have a moral imperative to defeat an invasion by Russia they consider unjust and unprovoked.
“There were certain subjective judgments from his side, unfortunately,” said Andriy Ben, a former fighter in the Ukrainian military, referring to Pope Francis.
“I am not going to comment on this,” he said outside the church in Lviv. “I hope that the next pope will be wiser, more enlightened, and better.”
Another worshipper coming out of the church, 57-year-old Oleh Yakymiak, said the late pontiff did much in his life that was good. “We understand that the good things he did are so much bigger than the painful thing he did to us,” said Yakymiak.
Most Ukrainians follow the Orthodox Christian faith but about 10% of the population are Catholics, many of them in the west of Ukraine where Lviv is located.
Church-goer Marta Binyshyn said she believed whoever the conclave of cardinals in Rome elects to succeed Pope Francis will be an improvement.
“We will see in the image of the next pope a person who will bring us more light, a little more help for Ukraine and Ukrainians,” she said.
An opposition member of the Ukrainian parliament, Sofia Fedyna, published a tribute to the late pope on social media platform Telegram, but also said some of his statements had left Ukrainians doubting that he supported them.
“I myself was critical of some of the statements, because one cannot equate and reconcile the victim and the criminal at the moment of committing the crime. Therefore, I hope that the next Pope will stand up for justice!,” she wrote.
Since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the pope has condemned the war as an unjustified act of aggression and has called Ukraine a “martyred nation.” He made appeals for peace at nearly every public appearance, at least twice a week.
He also urged the head of the Russian Orthodox church, who is closely aligned with the Russian state, not to become the Kremlin’s “altar boy”.
Despite that, he disappointed many Ukrainians by not explicitly condemning Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the aggressor.
He also caused anger by referring to the “great Russian empire” built by past rulers Peter I and Catherine II, who are revered in Russia but seen by many in Ukraine as leading the subjugation of their country.
Ukraine’s Catholic bishops told the pope at a meeting in Rome those comments had caused them great pain.
Russia says that it was forced to launch what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine because its national security was threatened by the NATO alliance encroaching on its borders. It has also said it was fighting to rid Ukraine of what he termed a “neo-Nazi regime” in Kyiv.
(Additional reporting by Alina Smutko and Sergiy Karazy; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Daren Butler)
