Given how firmly the Pontiff has embedded himself with Zelensky’s stormtroopers, this year’s is going to be particularly problematic.
His Holiness, Pope Francis, should give especial consideration to this year’s Urbi et Orbi address he is scheduled to give to Rome and the world this Christmas Day, 2022. Although all such addresses bring their own unique sets of problems, given how firmly the Pontiff has embedded himself with Zelensky’s stormtroopers, this year’s is going to be particularly problematic.
Although the presence of Sergio Agüero, Messi and the rest of Argentina’s football greats in St Peter’s Square this Christmas would be a master propaganda stroke that would help put Zelensky, Macron and similar non-entities back in their boxes, others, with graver concerns, would not be impressed by such chicanery.
Those others include His Excellency Alexander Avdeev, Russia’s Ambassador to the Holy See, whose job it is to foster diplomatic relations between both entities, which first began in 1452 with the Papal mission to Tzar Ivan the Great, Grand Prince of Moscow and Grand Prince of all Rus.
If, as they say, the Vatican thinks in centuries, there is five and a half centuries, more than a quarter of the history of the Church, of diplomatic relations to begin with and against such a backdrop, begun remember when all of Byzantium, the Second Rome, was in grave peril, the Pope strolling a few hundred meters down the road to see Avdeev at the Russian delegation was a trivial price to pay to keep that rich legacy alive.
As I have popped over on umpteen occasions from Dublin to the Palestinian Embassy in Rome to confer with leading members of the Catholic Church, the Pope’s short taxi ride did not impress me and, I am sure, it did not spectacularly impress Avdeev, who no doubt underwent the rigorous professional diplomatic training Russia, China and other adult countries give their diplomats and which empowers them to undertake their duties with the decorum and gravity their work entails.
This is in marked contrast to most, but not all, of those who represent Zelensky’s rump Reich where their ambassadors to Germany and Ireland, to take but two examples, have been thundering disgraces. Though I have, to be fair, seen the same thing in Tokyo, where the Irish Ambassador was, like the EU’s Jean-Claude Juncker, a hopeless drunkard, so too, importantly, have countless others. If diplomacy is the name of the game, then one must send professional diplomats and not Ukrainian thugs or Irish and EU drunkards to break bread with the Russians.
Although that much should be self-evident, my earlier article was largely based on this now infamous interview Pope Francis gave to a bunch of Americans, including a brace of the Pope’s fellow-Jesuits and Gerry O’Connell, America Magazine’s Vatican correspondent, who seems to have been in Rome even before Pope Francis was in short pants in Buenos Aires.
Though O’Connell has been in Rome longer than most Romans have, he does not seem to be aware that, in Rome, one should do as the Romans do. Instead of being respectful, O’Connell harangued the Pope about why he would not simply parrot the position of the American regime that all of the blame for the Ukrainian quagmire and, presumably, much else, lay with Putin and the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches O’Connell’s Ukrainian heroes have now suppressed and banned.
It was in his reply to O’Connell that the Pope libelled the Muslim Chechens and Buddhist Buryats before he claimed that he generally prefers not to be specific in his condemnations “so as not to offend and rather condemn in general, although it is well known whom I am condemning.” He then went on to say that his visit “to the Russian embassy [to the Holy See was], an unusual gesture because the pope never goes to an embassy”.
Let’s first look at that visit so that we are on an even keel. Russia’s Vatican Embassy is staffed by professionals, who would be no more fazed by a visit from the Pope than they would be by China’s President Xi or by any other global leader or influencer. Those Russians are simply diplomats, who are carrying out the duties they and thousands more like them in embassies worldwide were trained and then assigned to perform. The Pope’s offer to travel to Moscow was duly passed up the line to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov whom the Pope confirms, gave it due, professional consideration, and the appropriate diplomatic reply.
That is no trivial point. Lavrov, Avdeev and their fellow Russian diplomats are well-briefed professionals and deserve respect on that account. Not so alas, the Holy Father and his team which, according to the interview, is headed by Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, Cardinal Michael Czerny and Archbishop Paul Gallagher, none of whom have gone through the same rigorous training the diplomats of Russia and China have.
The Pope then said at the interview “The position of the Holy See is to seek peace and to seek an understanding. The diplomacy of the Holy See is moving in this direction and, of course, is always willing to mediate”. However, his subsequent comments highlighting the Holodomor were not only unhelpful but unworthy of his office or of those, like Krajewski in particular, who fed those superfluous lines to him.
Although Ukraine is a quagmire the Pope should involve himself in, after being fully briefed by competent professionals of course, it is not the only one. Armenians, to Ukraine’s south east, are today suffering another genocide, a Holocaust, a Holodomor, a Nakba or, as they call it, a Medz Yeghern (great crime) or Aghet (catastrophe). And the only body that is stopping their enemies finishing them off once and for all is the Russian Armed Forces, Buryati and Chechens included.
So, when the Holy Father wishes Armenia’s faithful Sznorawórsz surp dz’nunt, or when he wishes Syria’s Aramaic speakers Hwylēh maran Shwubuḥaʾ lshemēh, the non-Aramaic speaking Christians of Syria and Palestine Miládon-mazídon and the Ethiopians and Eritreans Burúk ledét, ¡Feliz Navidad!, Heureuse et sainte fête de Noël, Buon Natale, let him tell Rome and the world, in whatever oblique way he wishes and in whatever language he chooses, that the major threat to world peace today in the Americas, in all of Africa, in Eastern Europe, in the Baltic Sea and even in Santa’s Lapland wilderness remains the same malign NATO anti-Christs that have wreaked havoc worldwide since the fall of Bandera and Hitler. And though this Christmas day, we should be grateful for the joys that Maradona, Messi, Di Stéfano and, prior to his “unfortunate” heart attack, Agüero brought the world, Argentina, in the form of His Holiness Pope Francis 1, can bring much greater joy to the world if he, in St Peter’s Square this Christmas Day, demands that NATO and its Ukrainian, EU and other muppets get off our collective backs and leave the children of Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Syria and Palestine enjoy that pacem in terris so many millions of their compatriots have given their lives for.
