After last week’s meeting between Pope Francis and President Putin, many observers were frustrated at the Pope’s apparent reluctance to condemn Russia’s actions in the UkraineAfter his 50-minute meeting with the Pope on Wednesday last week, President Vladimir Putin presented Francis with a gift that spoke volumes. It was a depiction, embroidered with gold filament, of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The message was clear. Consecrated in 1883, the cathedral was blown to pieces by Stalin in 1931, but resurrected in the 1990s by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who joined forces with the Orthodox Church in a £230 million reconstruction project. Christianity, Putin was saying, is safe with me. Defender of the Christian faith, and especially of persecuted religious minor