Shevchuk: Vatican does not understand how Russia ‘betrays trust’

Pope Leo called on ‘everyone to intensify their efforts to end this war’, regretting that ‘Ukraine is being hit by continuous attacks, leaving entire populations exposed to the cold of winter’.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church warned that Russian propaganda had infiltrated the Vatican and was being used for “information and psychological operations” channelled through diplomatic networks.

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who leads the largest Eastern-rite Church in communion with Rome, said Vatican officials have long refused to acknowledge such claims and deny that “such a war is being waged” on its grounds.

“For a long time, the Vatican did not realise that propaganda could operate at the level of official diplomatic representatives. They did not believe that Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See could openly manipulate or simply lie, because diplomacy is traditionally built on trust,” Archbishop Shevchuk told the state news agency Ukrinform.

Shevchuk was speaking in Kyiv about the role of journalism during the war with Russia. He cited two cases involving Ukrainian priests abducted in Berdiansk in southeastern Ukraine, saying that the information Russia provided to the Vatican about the conditions of the priests differed greatly from the accounts of the priests themselves after their release.

Speaking from Davos this week, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed optimism that an agreement to end the war is “nearly ready” as he announced a trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi with Ukrainian, Russian and US representatives. In a statement on Thursday, Zelenskyy said the talks were “constructive,” paving the way for a possible second meeting next weekend in the UAE capital.

However, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Russia was attempting to sabotage negotiations as it launched a massive aerial assault, striking Kyiv and Kharkiv with ballistic missiles and drones in the early hours of Saturday. “[Putin’s] missiles hit not only our people, but also the negotiation table,” he wrote on social media.

Pope Leo called on “everyone to intensify their efforts to end this war” during his Angelus address on Sunday, regretting that “Ukraine is being hit by continuous attacks, leaving entire populations exposed to the cold of winter”.

“I am following the situation with sorrow, and I am close to and pray for those who suffer,” he said. “The continuation of hostilities, with increasingly serious consequences for civilians, widens the rift between peoples and pushes further back the opportunity for a just and lasting peace.”

In a response to the “wartime mobilisation” of Russian religious institutions, the Council of Christian Churches of Ukraine called all Christians to pray for a just peace in Ukraine and to support peacemaking initiatives.

The council issued a statement on Friday, reacting with “indignation” to claims by the Russian foreign intelligence service which described the Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople as the “Antichrist in a cassock”. It compared Russia’s move to the worst examples of Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda.

Its members, representing major Christian churches in Ukraine, said Christian leaders and organisations should “consistently expose and condemn the ideology of the ‘Russian world’”, which they said promotes the concept of holy war and constitutes “a violation of both fundamental Gospel principles and the foundational principles of freedom of religion”.

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