did pope visit russia

News & Commentary

Vatican says pope has not accepted invitation to go to russia.

• March 21, 2024
• News & Commentary

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis has not accepted an invitation to travel to Moscow in June to meet with Vladimir Putin, the director of the Holy See press office said.

A report on the website of Intelligence Online, a French journal, “does not correspond to the truth,” Matteo Bruni told reporters March 20.

A story on the website March 19 had said Ivan Soltanovsky, the Russian ambassador to the Holy See, invited the pope to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow in June, “an invitation that the pope accepted,” Intelligence Online had reported.

The journal said the pope, who repeatedly has been invited to visit Ukraine, would travel to Kyiv immediately after visiting Moscow.

After Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Pope Francis said he would be willing to accept the invitation of the Ukrainian government to visit, but only if he could visit Moscow as well.

Earlier the Russian news agency RIA Novosti had reported that Pope Francis had congratulated Putin on his victory in the presidential election March 17, an election Western observers described as rigged. Bruni had told Catholic News Service March 18 that the report was not true.

The Vatican has repeatedly offered to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia, and last year Pope Francis sent his peace envoy for Ukraine, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, to Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Beijing to meet with foreign leaders and advance peace talks on Ukraine.

In early March, however, the pope caused consternation when segments of an interview were released in which he said Russia and Ukraine need to have the “courage of the white flag” to halt the fighting and negotiate.

The phrase “white flag” usually refers to surrendering, and Ukrainian leaders were outraged.

Pope Francis was not asking Ukraine to consider surrendering to Russia when he called for negotiations to end the war, but he was calling for both Russia and Ukraine to cease hostilities and engage in peace talks, said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state.

At the end of his weekly general audience March 20, praying for peace in Ukraine and in the Holy Land, Pope Francis said, “War is always a defeat.”

“We must make every effort to discuss, to negotiate to end war,” he said. “Let’s pray for this.”

By Cindy Wooden | Catholic News Service

Our Mission

• Phone: (513) 241-5615
• Address: 28 W. Liberty St. Cincinnati, OH 45202

Writer’s Guidelines Privacy Policy Post a Prayer Request Donor Portal Our Mission

Recent Articles

Kenya mourns 21 boys killed in academy dormitory fire

Live in Love

Be Thankful for the Good and Bad

Missing boy’s case spurs church groups to combat human trafficking in Argentina

Raleigh Catholics strive to accompany migrant farmworkers

Pope makes surprise visit to Russian Embassy to the Vatican

The visit came as a surprise as it did not follow typical protocol.

The Vatican press office confirmed that Pope Francis made a visit to the Russian Embassy to the Holy See to express his concern about the fighting in Ukraine on Friday morning.

The Russian Embassy to the Holy See is a short distance outside of Vatican City situated on the road leading into St. Peter's Square, and this was seen by most as a strong personal papal initiative.

Aside from saying the visit lasted just over an hour, the Vatican provided no further information nor distributed any video or photographs. The pope was seen leaving the embassy building seated in the front seat of a small, white car.

MORE: Russia-Ukraine live updates

Ambassador Aleksandr Avdeyev, the Russian diplomat at the embassy, told Russian media that "the pope personally wanted to ask about the situation in Donbas and Ukraine" and expressed his great concern about the humanitarian situation and conditions of the population. He reportedly urged for the care of children, the sick and the people who were suffering.

The pope's surprise and unprecedented visit to the embassy took many Vatican watchers by surprise, as it is normal protocol for ambassadors to come to the Vatican to meet with the pope. However, Pope Francis has in the past dropped in to see people in Vatican offices outside the walls of the tiny state when he has urgent matters he wishes to discuss.

On Thursday, Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state, said in a video statement released after the start of Russian military operations in Ukraine that although the tragic scenarios everyone feared were becoming reality "there is still time for goodwill, there is still room for negotiation." He said he hoped those who hold the destiny of the world in their hands would have a "glimmer of conscience."

Commentators have noted that the pope and the Vatican have been careful about publicly criticizing and naming Russia, some say, so as not to antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church.

On Wednesday at the end of his general audience in the Vatican, Pope Francis called on believers and nonbelievers to pray and fast for peace in Ukraine on Ash Wednesday to combat the "diabolical insistence, the diabolical senselessness of violence," saying that "once again the peace of all is threatened by partisan interests."

MORE: Questions about the Ukraine-Russia conflict, answered

He appealed to those with political responsibilities to do a serious examination of conscience before God and urged world leaders to "refrain from any action that would cause even more suffering to the people, destabilizing the coexistence between nations and discrediting international law."

Earlier Friday, the Vatican press office announced the pope would not make his scheduled one-day trip to Florence Sunday and would have to skip the Ash Wednesday ceremony in the Vatican at the start of Lent due to a flare up of knee pain. His doctors have told him he needs a longer period of rest, but that did not seem to stop him making Friday's surprise visit.

Related Topics

• Catholic Church

Popular Reads

How to watch the Harris-Trump ABC News debate

• Sep 10, 8:55 PM

Suspect at large in freeway shooting

• Sep 8, 11:18 PM

Johnny Gaudreau's widow announces pregnancy

• Sep 9, 3:52 PM

Neighbor arrested in death of missing nurse

• Sep 7, 6:59 PM

4 dead in shooting at Georgia high school

• Sep 4, 10:47 PM

ABC News Live

24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

The pope makes his strongest plea yet for an end to Russia's war on Ukraine

The Associated Press

Pope Francis waves during the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican on Sunday. He has appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, imploring him to "stop this spiral of violence and death" in Ukraine. The pontiff also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "be open" to serious peace proposals. Alessandra Tarantino/AP hide caption

Pope Francis waves during the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican on Sunday. He has appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, imploring him to "stop this spiral of violence and death" in Ukraine. The pontiff also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "be open" to serious peace proposals.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, imploring him to "stop this spiral of violence and death" in Ukraine and denounced the "absurd" risk to humanity of catastrophic nuclear war as tensions escalate.

Francis uttered his strongest plea yet on the seventh-month war as he addressed the public in St. Peter's Square. It was the first time in public that he cited Putin's leadership.

The pontiff also called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to "be open" to serious peace proposals. He exhorted the international community to "use all diplomatic instruments" to end this "huge tragedy" and "horror" of war.

"This terrible, inconceivable wound of humanity, instead of shrinking, continues to bleed even more, threatening to spread,'' Francis said.

"That humanity again finds itself before the threat of atomic war is absurd,'' the pontiff said. "What more has to happen, how much more blood has to flow" before the war ends? asked Francis.

The pope implored "the Russian Federation president, also for the love of his people, to stop this spiral of violence and death."

He then urged Zelenskyy to "be open to serious proposals to peace,'' and called upon "all protagonists of international life and political leaders with insistence to do all they can to put an end to the war,'' avoiding "dangerous escalation."

Francis called for the "recourse to all diplomatic instruments to end this huge tragedy." In his address he called war "a horror" and "madness."

He expressed anguish that "the world is learning about the geography of Ukraine" through the names of its cities and towns, now associated with the death of civilians, including Bucha and Mariupol.

Throughout the war, Francis has denounced the recourse to arms and urged dialogue. But recently, he stressed Ukraine's right to defend itself from aggression.

• Pope Francis
• russian president vladimir putin

Advertisement

Supported by

In Visit to Tiny Flock in Mongolia, Pope Has an Eye on Russia and China

The pontiff arrived Friday on a trip that the Vatican said was meant to encourage the fewer than 1,500 Catholics there. But it also brings him close to two great powers that have vexed him.

• Share full article

By Jason Horowitz

Reporting from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Pope Francis has long expressed a desire to visit Russia and China in hopes of healing the church’s historical rifts and ensuring the faith’s future in the populous East. On Friday, he came very close, landing in Mongolia, a country sandwiched between the two geopolitical giants, with a minuscule Catholic population that no pope has visited before.

“The inhabitants are few,” Francis acknowledged in brief remarks on the plane to Mongolia. But the country, which at times seems so vast as not to end, is also a place where the “culture is great,” he said.

On Sunday, he called the trip a “much-desired visit which will be an opportunity to embrace a church that is small in number, but vibrant in faith and great in charity.”

But many observers in and out of the church are wondering why Francis, who is 86 and often uses a wheelchair, traveled more than 5,000 miles to visit fewer than 1,500 Catholics, in a geographically vast nation where a good chunk of the largely nomadic population of 3.3 million knows very little about him, according to a pollster.

The answer, the Vatican has said, is that Mongolia, like other far-flung places Francis has visited, speaks to his priorities for the direction he wants to take the church, and his mission to improve cooperation and dialogue among the world’s religions. Francis also has ambitions to be heard on the secular stage, and by two world powers with which he has rocky relations, at a time of great upheaval.

The Vatican says the principal reason for the visit is to encourage the tiny community of Catholics, in keeping with his emphasis on drawing attention to the church’s peripheries.

More than 40 percent of Mongolians say they have no religious identity, according to census data . Of those who say they are religious, some 87 percent say they are Buddhist. About 5 percent are Muslim, 4 percent identify as adherents of shamanism and barely 2 percent are Christians.

Last year, Francis stunned many in the Vatican by elevating an Italian missionary in the capital city of Ulaanbaatar, who has been in Mongolia for decades, to the exalted status of cardinal, and gave him a coveted spot in the Vatican’s powerful office for evangelization.

“It has been a gradual and slow growth,” the cardinal, Giorgio Marengo, 49, said, describing his experience in Mongolia. It has not, he said, been “very sudden or significant in a way in terms of numbers, but a constant little growth.”

But the numbers are still exceptionally small, and as a result, there appears to be less than the usual buzz over a papal visit.

“Nobody actually is talking about the pope,” said Sumati Luvsandendev, a leading Mongolian political analyst and opinion pollster.

Beyond meeting members of the small Mongolian church, Francis will also use a gathering with representatives from Mongolia’s mix of faiths to further his mission of interreligious tolerance.

Ulaanbaatar, which is heavily polluted and increasingly crowded because of internal displacement, will provide an opportunity for him to touch on the themes of migration and the environment that are core to his pontificate.

Mongolia’s suffering from climate change, exploitation by mining interests and even overproduction of cashmere by pasture-decimating goats will allow him to amplify his cry to protect the environment, in a nation where eagles and horses are core to the national identity, and where livestock outnumber people by about 20 to one.

The four-day visit to what Francis called the “heart of Asia” began at Chinggis Khaan International Airport, where he received a welcome gift of dried yogurt instead of the customary gift horse — sometimes symbolic, sometimes real — given to visiting dignitaries. He was met on the tarmac by soldiers in red and blue uniforms and gold helmets, then wheeled into a Hyundai flying a Vatican flag, which took him to the residence of the head of the local church, where he will stay.

The pope’s visit will include meetings with Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai and other authorities, Catholic charity groups and local clergy. But it also brings Francis close to the two neighboring leaders, President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia and President Xi Jinping in China, who have vexed his ambitions in and out of the church.

In 2018, Francis, seeking more access to China, made a largely secretive deal with the government to ensure more collaboration over the nomination of bishops. The pope typically appoints bishops, but the Communist government has long insisted on naming its own to more closely control the state-run church there.

Conservatives and advocates for human rights protested the Vatican’s decision to acknowledge some of those bishops and, they say, legitimize the practice — though the deal, designed to narrow the divide between the state- and Rome-led churches, recognized Francis as the leader of the church and gave him an important role in the process.

Some accused the pontiff of selling out religious liberty and China’s long-suffering underground church, which does not recognize the state-appointed bishops. But the Vatican argued that the deal was worth it given the longer-term goal of more dialogue and a greater church presence in China.

Since then, China has only strained relations by continuing to crack down on religious minorities, and it has consistently violated the spirit of the agreement by unilaterally appointing bishops. It is unclear whether Chinese Catholics will cross the border with Mongolia to hear or even meet the pope during the visit.

Some experts suggest that the Vatican hopes that Mongolia, because of its location and close economic and political ties to China, could act as an intermediary to improve relations. In his flight to Mongolia, Francis passed over Chinese airspace, allowing him to send a customary telegram of greetings to Mr. Xi, a rare direct communication between them.

Mongolia’s neighbor to the north, Russia, has proved even more nettlesome. At the beginning of his pontificate, Francis pursued steps to reconcile a more than 1,000-year schism between the Eastern and Western church by meeting in Cuba with Patriarch Kirill I, the leader of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church.

But Russia’s war in Ukraine has blown up that effort, and vexed Francis, who has chastised Kirill as being the “altar boy” of Mr. Putin.

Francis’ lingering ambitions to keep the dream of reconciliation alive, experts say, has led to some awkward moments of softening and kind words for Russia. The latest came in recent days, when in comments made by video to Catholic youth in St. Petersburg, Francis praised 18th century Russian rulers and the Great Russia they helped create — an empire that Mr. Putin has invoked in framing his invasion of Ukraine.

“Never forget the legacy,” Francis said. “You are the heirs of Great Russia: Great Russia of saints, rulers, Great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire — great, enlightened, of great culture and great humanity.”

The Vatican did not publish those remarks, which were off the cuff, but they were heard in a clip circulated by religious agencies and Russian news media. They prompted criticism from Ukrainians, who have long been frustrated by the pope’s efforts to maintain a sort of neutrality in the hopes of playing an eventual role in a peace deal, an ambition geopolitical experts say is a fantasy.

Pope Francis did not intend to “glorify imperialistic logic,” the Vatican said on Tuesday.

Many Mongolians still feel culturally close to Russia after 70 years of Soviet-influenced communist rule that suppressed religion. The country opened up after the fall of Communism, established relations with the Vatican in 1992 and enshrined religious freedom in its Constitution.

But while Mongolia’s neighbors perhaps increased the resonance of the pope’s trip, the Vatican on Tuesday made it clear, when asked about possible meetings with the Chinese or Russians while there, that the focus was on Mongolia.

“The trip is Mongolia,” said Matteo Bruni, the pope’s spokesman. “Pope Francis will go principally to talk to them.”

But the world’s powers were clearly on his mind. When a reporter on the flight who showed him a Ukrainian soldier’s canteen, apparently perforated with shrapnel, asked if diplomacy was hard, Francis said, “Yes, you can’t imagine how hard it is,” and added, “And at times it takes a sense of humor.”

A photo caption with an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to nuns praying in a church. The nuns were attending Mass, not saying Mass.

How we handle corrections

Jason Horowitz is the Rome bureau chief, covering Italy, the Vatican, Greece and other parts of Southern Europe. He previously covered the 2016 presidential campaign, the Obama administration and Congress, with an emphasis on political profiles and features. More about Jason Horowitz

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

How Nail Salons Lift Morale:  Paying attention to beauty may seem a trivial concern when the very fate of Ukraine is at stake. But for many Ukrainian women, it is an important ritual of daily life .

A Tug Between Russia and Europe:  A falling-out between former political allies  in Montenegro has complicated the country’s efforts to join the European Union and curb pro-Russian influence.

Street Artist Documents War:  Using ruins as his canvas, Gamlet Zinkivskyi has captured life in wartime Ukraine  in dozens of grim, gripping and harshly beautiful paintings.

U.S. Indicts Russian Military Members :  The United States expanded its hunt for Russia’s cyberwarriors , indicting five members of the country’s military intelligence agency for attacks on Ukraine and American companies in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky Plans Major Shake-Up:  President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed ahead with his sweeping overhaul  of the senior government ranks as the head of Ukraine’s ruling party released a slate of nine candidates for top cabinet positions.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

Pope Francis offers to meet Putin to try to end Ukraine war

Pope Francis says he made a request to meet Russian president three weeks after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Pope Francis has said he offered to travel to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to stop the war in Ukraine but has yet to hear back.

The pontifex made the request for a meeting via the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, 20 days after Putin ordered troops to enter Ukraine on February 24 , the pope told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Tuesday.

Popes for decades have sought to visit Moscow as part of the longstanding effort to heal relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, which split with Rome more than 1,000 years ago. But an invitation has never been forthcoming.

“Of course, it would be necessary for the leader of the Kremlin to make available some window of opportunity,” the pope was quoted as saying.

“But we still have not had a response and we are still pushing, even if I fear that Putin cannot and does not want to have this meeting at this moment,” he added.

Following suggestions over a visit to the Ukrainian capital, the pope was clear: “I am not going to Kyiv now … I have to go to Moscow first, I have to meet Putin.”

. @Pontifex_it : «I am ready to meet Putin in Moscow» | exclusive interview with @lucfontana , editor in chief @corriere https://t.co/Yxvs44i7pu — Corriere della Sera (@Corriere) May 3, 2022

During the interview, Francis also reported a conversation he had in March with the Russian Orthodox Church’s Patriarch Kirill – a staunch supporter of the invasion.

“With paper in hand, he read all of the justifications for the war,” the pope told Corriere. “I listened and told him: ‘I don’t understand any of this. Brother, we are not clerics of the state, we cannot use language of politics, but that of Jesus … For this we need to find the paths of peace, to stop the firing of arms.’”

“He can’t turn into Putin’s altar boy,” Francis added. The two religious leaders were supposed to meet in Jerusalem, but the Vatican called off the meeting to avoid “confusion”.

The pope has repeatedly called for an end to the hostilities in the war-torn country but has not directly criticised Putin.

In early April, the pope said some “potentate, sadly caught up in anachronistic claims of nationalist interests, is provoking and fomenting conflicts”.

Francis has frequently denounced the weapons industry and the announced increases in defence spending by the West in recent weeks.

But he has also defended the right of Ukrainians to protect their territory from the Russian invasion, in line with Catholic social doctrine. He told Corriere he felt he was too removed to judge the morality of resupplying the Ukrainian armed forces from the West.

But he also said he was trying to understand why Russia had reacted as it had. Maybe “this barking of NATO at Russia’s door” had prompted it, he was quoted as saying, “An anger that I don’t know if you can say was provoked, but may be facilitated.”

Vatican defends pope's praise of 'great' Russian Empire after fury in Ukraine

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.

"Never give up on this heritage. You are descendants of the great Mother Russia, step forward with it. And thank you — thank you for your way of being, for your way of being Russian."

The pope gave a prepared speech to the event in his native Spanish before switching to Italian for this unscripted aside. The online transcript of the speech does not include these comments, video of which was shared widely online over the weekend.

The pope was strongly criticized by Ukrainian leaders, who said he was repeating Russian nationalist talking points that are used to justify the Kremlin's war. Russian President Vladimir Putin has compared himself to the expansionist Peter the Great and spoken of Ukraine being part of a historic, greater Russia.

"It is precisely with such imperialist propaganda, the 'spiritual ties' and the 'need' to save 'great Mother Russia' that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages," Oleg Nikolenko, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook.

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."

Amid growing pressure, the Vatican said Tuesday that it was “clear” from the context of the pontiff’s comments that they were not designed to praise Russian imperialism.

“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.

The pope has repeatedly criticized Russia's actions in Ukraine, describing the invaded country as "martyred" while calling for peace throughout the war.

But Francis' latest intervention was warmly received in the Kremlin.

"It is admirable that the pontiff knows Russian history," Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in his daily press briefing Tuesday.

"It is deep and the legacy is very old, not restricted to Peter I. The entire society and schools work hard to hand over this to young people. The pontiff going along with this effort is really good and makes us glad," he said.

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.

Drawing a parallel to his war in Ukraine, Putin said Peter did not take territories from Sweden and others but "returned" them to their natural place in the wider Russian Empire.

Catherine II, better known as Catherine the Great, annexed Crimea in 1783.

Days before his forces annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, Putin told an audience that "Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities," arguing that Russia and Ukraine were historically inseparable.

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."

Ukrainians and many Western analysts have rejected this reading of history.

Olivia Durand, an expert in Russian colonial history and a visiting fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, told NBC News it was "regrettable" that the pope was repeating the language of great Russian chauvinism, a religious ideology with strong imperialist overtones which saw Moscow as the protector of the "true" Orthodox faith after the fall of the previous centers of Christianity.

"This speech is understandably an upsetting one for people in Ukraine and beyond — it feels tone deaf and unaware of the deeper history of religious politicization ... during the successive ages of Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the USSR and today’s Russian Federation," she said.

I cover early morning U.S. breaking news, everything from severe weather to crime. I'm based in London and have worked for American news outlets since 2013.

Russia ready to receive Pope Francis’ peace envoy again after Cardinal Zuppi’s Beijing visit

As Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Pope Francis’ special envoy for peace in Ukraine, concluded his three-day visit to Beijing (Sept. 13-15) where he met Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, surprising news came from Moscow.

TASS, a state-owned Russian news agency, reported that Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation, said that same morning that Moscow was expecting a second visit from Cardinal Zuppi and was ready to receive him to discuss the Ukrainian crisis. Mr. Lavrov did not give a date for the cardinal’s second visit to Moscow.

“The Vatican is continuing its efforts. The papal envoy will come back [to Russia] soon. We are ready to meet with anyone, we are ready to talk with anyone,” TASS quoted Mr. Lavrov as saying during a roundtable discussion on the settlement of the war in Ukraine.

As Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Pope Francis’ special envoy for peace in Ukraine, concluded his three-day visit to Beijing, surprising news came from Moscow.

The previous day, Sept. 14, the Vatican issued a statement that said Cardinal Zuppi met with the Chinese special representative in an “open and cordial atmosphere” and that they discussed “the war in Ukraine and its dramatic consequences, emphasizing the need to combine efforts to encourage dialogue and find paths that lead to peace.” It added that they also addressed the problem of food safety “with the hope that the export of grain can soon be guaranteed, especially to the countries most at risk.”

Cardinal Zuppi traveled by plane to Beijing, via Istanbul, from Berlin, where he had participated in the annual international meeting for peace organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, which Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, also attended. Ahead of his visit to Beijing, the Vatican issued a statement that said his visit to China “represents another step of the mission desired by the Pope to sustain humanitarian initiatives and to seek paths that may lead to a just peace.”

It was significant, however, that the cardinal and the Chinese representative discussed the U.N.-brokered grain agreement that Russia blocked last month. The agreement would have allowed Ukraine to export its grain through the Black Sea. A recent effort by Turkey to get the agreement back on track failed, much to the dismay of poor countries that depend on Ukraine’s grain exports.

The foreign minister of the Russian Federation said that Moscow was expecting a second visit from Cardinal Zuppi and was ready to receive him to discuss the Ukrainian crisis.

The 67-year-old Italian-born Cardinal Zuppi is archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. At Pope Francis’ request, he had already visited Kyiv, June 5-6, where he met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other representatives of the Ukrainian government as well as religious leaders. Later, he traveled to Moscow, June 28-29, where he was received by Yuri Ushakov, a diplomatic advisor to President Vladimir Putin, and by Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian minister for children; he did not meet the Russian president or the foreign minister but he was received by the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a strong supporter of the war. Subsequently, the cardinal went to Washington, July 17-19, and was received by President Joe Biden and state and religious leaders.

Cardinal Zuppi was accompanied by a member of the Vatican’s secretariat of state on all these visits, during which he emphasized not only the humanitarian aspects of the mission regarding the exchange of prisoners and the return to Ukraine of the children that had been deported there by the Russian occupying forces, but also underlined the importance of finding paths that could lead to peace in Ukraine.

Both Cardinal Zuppi and the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, have gone out of their way to emphasize that the papal peace initiative is not an attempt at mediation, since Ukraine has explicitly ruled out such a role for the Vatican. But it is seeking to create a climate where discussions for an end to the conflict become possible.

Gerard O’Connell is America ’s Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History . He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.

Most popular

Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more.

The latest from america

Color Scheme

• Use system setting
• Light theme

Pope Francis ready to visit Ukraine and Russia

German Press Agency

ROME – Pope Francis says he is willing to travel to Ukraine, which is under attack from Russia, but only on the condition that he can also travel to Moscow.

“I will go to both places or to neither,” the head of the Catholic Church said in an interview with Saturday’s edition of the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion.

The war in Ukraine could only be ended through dialogue and concrete peace initiatives, he said. The pontiff, 86, was already considering a trip to the countries last summer. At that time he also said he would like to visit Kyiv and Moscow.

The Vatican has long sought to play a mediating role in the conflict – in this context, he spoke to La Nacion of the “desire to serve peace.” In the interview, Francis reported how he had asked Russian leaders whether he could travel to Moscow on the second day after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he said, had declined with thanks at the time.

The pontiff reiterated his dismay at the war: “The war hurts me, that’s what I want to say. The war hurts me.”

In his public appearances and audiences, he regularly speaks of the suffering of Ukrainians. For diplomatic reasons, he does not mention Russia by name.

Pope Francis meets with Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Antonij

By Vatican News

Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Antonij of Volokolamsk visited the Vatican for the first time on Friday.

The meeting between the head of the Department for External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow and Pope Francis is part of the ecumenical contacts between the Pope and the Patriarchate of Moscow, and follows the video conference between Pope Francis and the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, which took place on March 16. 

Metropolitan Antonij of Volokolamsk replaced Metropolitan Hilarion in June as president of the Department of External Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Metropolitan Hilarion had been sitting next to Patriarch Kirill during the online conversation in March, when the Pope expressed to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia his conviction that, regarding the war in Ukraine, the duty of Christians and their pastors is to "do everything " possible "to help peace, to help those who suffer "and to stop the fire” because “those who pay the bill for the war are the people."

Subsequently, on 25 April, Pope Francis sent a letter of good wishes to Patriarch Kirill on the occasion of the Easter of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches that follow the Julian calendar. 

“May the Holy Spirit," the Pope wrote in the letter, "transform our hearts and make us true peacemakers, especially for war-torn Ukraine", while "we feel all the weight of the suffering of our human family, crushed from violence, war and many injustices.”

Thank you for reading our article. You can keep up-to-date by subscribing to our daily newsletter. Just click here

More upcoming events:

The Pope's Agenda

Listen to our podcasts

Subscribe to our newsletters

To get the latest news

Papal audiences

Daily readings

Saint of the day

• Taiwan News
• Editorial & Opinion
• Bilingual Pages

• All Front Page Taiwan News Business Editorial & Opinion Sports World News Features Bilingual Pages

Tue, Sep 10, 2024 page5

Pope francis lands in east timor to a rock star welcome.

Pope Francis yesterday arrived to a rock star welcome in East Timor, where he was to rally the Catholic-majority nation’s faithful with a huge mass expected to attract more than half the country’s 1.3 million population.

Catholic devotees have clamored to see Francis as he headed to Asia’s youngest nation — making pilgrimages from faraway towns and hours-long crossings of its border with Indonesia.

Tens of thousands lined the streets of capital, Dili, waving Vatican-colored flags and umbrellas while screaming as the 87-year-old was driven through the streets flanked by security.

People wait on a street to welcome Pope Francis in Dili, East Timor, yesterday.

He appeared in good spirits after landing from Papua New Guinea for the third stop of a grueling 12-day Asia-Pacific tour, waving and smiling to a swarm of devotees trying to catch a glimpse of him.

“This will be a proud moment for me and my family, I think also for all the people of Timor-Leste,” a waiting 42-year-old Nunsia Karmen Maya said.

The pontiff was gifted a traditional scarf after arriving to an honor guard and greetings by East Timorese President Jose Ramos-Horta at Dili’s airport, which has been closed to civilian flights for three days.

He was to address East Timorese officials and diplomats later yesterday, but the trip’s highlight would be the colossal mass today, which is expected to draw 700,000 worshipers.

In the small seaside city sandwiched between mountains and the turquoise waters of the Ombai Strait, celebrations over the three-day visit were already in full swing.

The city has had an expensive makeover before the visit and authorities have relocated poor street-dwellers, including vendors in areas where Francis would travel, prompting criticism on social media.

Rights groups say some makeshift homes built by the poor were demolished in preparation for the mass. The government says they were erected illegally.

East Timorese Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao swept the streets with locals to help clean up the city before the pontiff’s arrival.

East Timor has a complex history marked by centuries-long Portuguese rule, decades of occupation by neighboring Indonesia and a UN-backed referendum that allowed it to break free.

Francis is the first pope to visit the nation, where about 98 percent of its 1.3 million people are Catholics, since its independence more than two decades ago.

The nation became formally independent in 2002, emerging from a brutal Indonesian occupation that left more than 200,000 East Timorese dead.

Among its problems, East Timor suffers corruption, gender-based violence, domestic abuse of persons with disabilities and child labor, but the most sensitive issue facing the pontiff is child abuse cases linked to the clergy.

Advocacy groups have called for Francis to speak out on the issue, but his official schedule currently includes no events with victims.

Cases include Nobel Prize-winning Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, who the Vatican secretly punished over allegations he sexually abused young children for decades.

Locals said they want the pope to bring a message of harmony — as he did in Indonesia last week.

“I hope that through this visit Papa Francisco will bring a message of peace,” said Francisco Amaral da Silva, a 58-year-old lecturer.

Francis’ schedule includes meetings with Jesuits, children and the Catholic faithful.

It is not only East Timorese who were expected to join the huge mass, to be held in a wide wetland area known as Tasitolu.

A local immigration office in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara Province predicted that many people would cross the border for the visit.

East Timor is one of the world’s poorest nations, heavily reliant on oil and gas revenues that experts say could be depleted within years.

Despite that, the government is rolling out the red carpet for Francis.

It has allocated US$12 million for the visit, including US$1 million for the mass altar alone — which stood beside a large crucifix.

With about 42 percent of East Timor’s population living below the poverty line, Francis is likely to touch on economic and social issues.

Others were using his visit to sell pope merchandise.

Teacher Silverio Tilman, 58, set up a stall selling pope T-shirts, raking in more than US$600 in two days — double the average monthly salary.

“We prepare these items, in case the pilgrims need them to attend the holy mass. We are not seeking big profits,” he said.

Most Popular

German warships to pass through strait, sino-russian air patrol designed to counter us, court orders ko wen-je’s detention, silicon photonics alliance formed, ko wen-je release quashed.

You might also like

Putin says Russia ready for talks

CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,

HK villagers reluctant to leave settlement

In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in

French wife tells rape trial police probe saved her life

A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious

Thailand catches 1.3 million kilos of invasive fish

Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Hem of His Garment

If you were to say to me, “You can be in a room with either Chris Rock or the Pope,” I’d say, “Chris Rock, please.” Nothing against the Pope, but he’s never made me laugh. Neither has he come up with a viable solution to America’s gun problem the way Chris Rock has, saying that the firearms themselves can be unregulated but that every bullet should cost five thousand dollars.

“O.K.,” you’d continue. “Julia Louis-Dreyfus or the Pope?”

“Oh, no question,” I’d tell you. “The cursing on ‘Veep’ amounted to poetry, so Julia Louis-Dreyfus.”

“Stephen Merchant or—”

“Stephen Merchant.”

The same goes for Stephen Colbert, Mike Birbiglia, Tig Notaro, Conan O’Brien, Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon, Ramy Youssef, and Jim Gaffigan—most of whom I know or have met at one time or another.

The crazy thing is that I didn’t have to choose between any of the above and the Pope. For reasons I will never quite understand, I got to be in a room with all of them—plus a hundred or so others who had also been summoned, without much advance notice, to the Vatican on a late-spring morning in June, when Rome was hot but not so hot that all you could talk about was how hot it was.

Like everyone I spoke to the night before our papal audience, when, minus Jimmy Fallon, the American contingent gathered for dinner, I’d initially thought that my invitation—which was sent by e-mail—was spam. “Right,” I said to the screen of my laptop. “Nice try, Russia.” I didn’t click on the attachment until Stephen Colbert assured me that it was legitimate, and that the Pope really did want to meet with comics and humorists from around the world in three days’ time, and at six-forty-five in the morning. The invitation made it sound like there’d be a dialogue, as if the Pope had questions or needed to ask us a favor, something along the lines of “Do you think you could maybe give the pedophilia stuff a rest?”

Everyone’s got a Catholic-clergy joke up their sleeve, perhaps one they heard at a party. Mine is: A cop stops a car two priests are riding in. “I’m looking for a couple of child molesters,” he tells them.

The priests look at each other. “We’ll do it!” they say.

Substitute rabbis or Baptist ministers for priests, and you’ll get nothing. I mean, the Catholic Church earned those laughs, and every time its senior clerics look away, or quietly send an offending clergyman to the back bench, it’s making this scandal larger than its ministry, at least to an outsider such as myself.

“Can you help me turn this around?” I imagined the Pope asking. “How can we get back to the sex-starved-nun jokes we all so enjoyed in the past?”

This is a man who had just been caught using an Italian word that translated to “faggotry” for the second time in three weeks. After our visit, which was covered by seemingly every news organization on Earth, the gaffe would be brought up again and again, especially in comment sections, by people convinced that, had they been invited to the Vatican, they’d have stayed home in protest, or perhaps would have attended and then caused a scene, most likely one involving paint.

It didn’t bother me, though. When I heard that the Pope had said “faggotry,” I laughed, in large part because it’s a funny word. Then, too, it’s not something you’d call a person—it’s not like “Shut up, fag.” Rather, it connotes behavior: “Take your faggotry outside, please.”

Pope Francis can’t preside over same-sex marriages, but he created a firestorm within his Church by blessing gay people about to be married. “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?” he asked, in 2013.

Then, yes, he said “faggotry,” but he apologized for it. Both times. I don’t think that he’s a homophobe so much as an eighty-seven-year-old. (“I said what again? Really?”)

My feeling is that if you want a church that is a hundred per cent gay-friendly, go join one—there are plenty to be had—or start your own. “Yes, but I want Our Lady of Sorrows to celebrate Pride Month,” I can hear someone whining.

It’s like going to Burger King and demanding a Big Mac. If you want a Big Mac, go across the street to McDonald’s. Jesus.

Also, I wasn’t bothered by the Pope’s use of “faggotry” because I’m not queer; I’m gay. The difference is that queer people are offended by just about everything. Gay people just wonder what they’ll wear to the Vatican at the crack of dawn, and what the proper etiquette is.

“If he holds out his hand, you can opt to kiss his ring!” my friend Leslie, who was brought up Catholic, wrote when I told her I was going.

I was raised in the Greek Orthodox Church. There, we kissed the priest’s hand when receiving Communion, though twice I moved up a few inches and kissed his watch instead, just to see how he’d react.

“Actually, no,” another friend wrote. “This Pope hates having his ring kissed, so if he holds out his hand, just shake it.”

I was in Sussex when my invitation arrived. It was eight-thirty in the morning, and by lunchtime I had my plane ticket and had booked a hotel within walking distance of the Vatican, which, like the city-states of San Marino and Monaco, is its own separate country, and could thus be added to a list I have on my computer titled “Countries I Have Been To.” The Vatican would be my sixtieth.

There’s another list on my computer titled “Stars I Have Seen.” People don’t count if they are onstage in a concert or a play. They have to be at large, or at an occasion we were both invited to. According to an online article my travel agent sent, one that referred to my fellow Vatican invitees as “yucksters,” I’d soon be adding two American comedians, a British one, and an actress, also American, to my list.

“Plus the Pope,” Hugh reminded me when I told him that I was definitely going.

“Oh, right,” I said, the way I might have had he said, “Plus Sully Sullenberger.” I guess I’d been limiting my list to entertainers and people who aren’t in show business but dazzle nevertheless, like Ann Richards, the late governor of Texas. If I don’t see the Pope as dazzling, I suppose it’s because I’m not religious in any way. On my deathbed, I’ll likely cover my bases and beg for forgiveness, but not until I’m coughing up blood, or see Hugh reaching for the plug of my respirator.

Does that make me an agnostic or a flat-out atheist? I do believe there was someone named Jesus who was a revolutionary, but I don’t think he was God’s son, or that he was resurrected. It was a shame that I was invited to the Vatican, actually—like sending me to the U.S. Open when I’ve never watched a football game in my life. I thought of the millions of people in the world who’d give anything to meet the Pope and realized that I knew only two of them: my friend Ewan’s cleaning lady and Stephen Colbert, who’s so Catholic he taught Sunday school.

The dress code on the invitation was daytime formal, which I was told amounted to shined shoes and a suit. The only one I had at my fingertips was bought nine years earlier, when I was invited to Buckingham Palace. The late Queen hosted tea parties every summer for do-gooders of one stripe or another, and I was included on account of all the rubbish I’d collected by the sides of British roads. She and I didn’t meet, but I saw her—she was standing within hearing range, close enough for me to comprehend how truly tiny she was. Her feet were the size of hot-dog buns. We’d been told to leave our phones and cameras at home, but everyone around me had snuck one in, and they were all going bananas.

Me, I’m just not a picture person. Am I glad other people have cameras? Sometimes. Like at the dinner Stephen Colbert arranged the night before our papal audience. I look at the photos of the assembled guests and wonder, What was I doing there? Why not Garrison Keillor, Tina Fey, or Donald Glover, to name just three of a thousand more qualified people? It was like a reproduction of “The Last Supper” with one of the disciples replaced by Snoopy.

“Does anyone have a favorite God joke?” Colbert asked as our final course was served. “It doesn’t have to be your own.”

Link copied

For most of the evening, I’d sat across from Whoopi Goldberg, who had no appetite and passed me all her plates after just a bite or two. That meant double servings of four separate pasta dishes, two steaks served on rafts of eggplant, four rich smothered dumplings, two tomato salads, and two cherry-and-goat-cheese pavlovas, plus all the food I snatched from the plate of Jim Gaffigan’s youngest son, who was seated to my right. Now my pants no longer fit, and my watchband was cutting off the circulation in my left hand. Even my throat was swollen. I cleared it before taking the floor.

“So God tells Adam, ‘I’m going to make you a wife, a helpmate, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She’ll be terrific in bed, enthusiastic, and uncomplaining. But it’ll cost you.’

“Adam asks, ‘How much?’

“ ‘An eye, an elbow, a collarbone, and your left ball.’

“Adam thinks for a minute, then asks, ‘What can I get for a rib?’ ”

The polite but underwhelming response I got from people who tell jokes for a living—who fill stadiums—should have taught me a lesson. Instead, I told another one.

“What’s the worst part of having sex with Jesus?

“He’s always wanting to come into your heart.”

Thank God Colbert told a joke as well. It was, he warned us, decades old, and one of the first he ever wrote. But at least he wrote it. Mine were ones people had told me at book signings. I don’t belong here, I thought, embarrassed, for the umpteenth time that evening.

Usually, I comfort myself by remembering that everyone secretly feels out of place. Here, though, I’m pretty sure it was just me. That said, my fellow-guests were welcoming and, it goes without saying, terribly, terribly funny, just as they were at six-forty-five the following morning, when we met at an entrance gate near the Pope’s living quarters and were led to a magnificently frescoed room in the Apostolic Palace. There, we joined the hundred other people who’d been invited: more international writers and comics, most of them from Italy. I knew only one, a woman named Luciana Littizzetto, whom I’d met years earlier, in Turin. She was the only non-Vatican representative to address the crowd that morning. Her remarks lasted a minute or two and were in Italian, as were the Pope’s.

The assembled group stood and applauded as he entered the room and took his thronelike seat before us. It speaks to the man’s humility that he allows every rank-and-file clergy member to outdress him. The cardinals were resplendent in their black cassocks, which had bright-scarlet buttons and a matching sash called a fascia. Better still were the Papal Gentlemen, who wore morning coats and white bow ties coupled with elaborate bibs, often with medals hanging off them. The Swiss Guard looked like Renaissance-era toy soldiers in their multicolored striped outfits, standing just so with feathers in their helmets, their halberds held before them. Even the friars in their dung-colored robes and sandals were more strikingly dressed than the Pope, who looked a bit mother-of-the-bride in a white cassock with a shawl-type thing over his shoulders. He wore a skullcap and, around his neck, a cross on which you could have crucified the late Queen of England.

The Pope read a prepared statement of which we were each given a copy. It amounted to: laughter makes the world go round. His voice was soft and passionless. At one point, he got a reaction by sticking a thumb above his ear and wagging his fingers, but, as one member of the American delegation said afterward, “we really just laughed out of politeness.”

The part that moved me took place after his address, when, row by row, we were led up the aisle and personally greeted. The Pope remained seated and shook each of our hands. Some people brought him gifts; others leaned in to tell him something. I think I said, “Thanks for having me.” Standing before him, I felt the same pity I’d felt for the Queen and would feel for anyone who has to meet people for a living. Nothing stirred inside me the way that it did in 2015, when, rounding a corner at the White House, where I’d been invited to talk with some speechwriters, I happened upon President Obama. For a moment, standing there with my mouth hanging open, I feared that I might spontaneously combust—with respect, with pride and awe. The encounter with the Pope, though, was like meeting the Dalai Lama: not an inconvenience by any stretch, not uninteresting, just “Oh, hi.”

Many people, after the handshake, walked a few steps, pulled out their phones, and then took a selfie with the Pope in the background. It was so tacky. I said to the Italian seated to my right, “You’d think he was Santa!”

As at any good fashion show, the majority of our time was spent waiting, but the clothes we saw made it all worthwhile. The difference, I thought, was that these outfits weren’t for sale. Then my friend Austin wrote from the States and told me that while in Rome I had to go to Gammarelli, a bespoke tailoring business, founded in 1798, that’s been dressing the Pope and his associates for generations. It wasn’t too far from my hotel, so late in the afternoon I went with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who wore great clothes and was seemingly up for anything. I’d worried on the walk over that Gammarelli wouldn’t sell to laymen. “I’m going to tell them that my brother is a priest,” I said to her, “that he’s my same size, and I thought this might make for a good Christmas present.”

I figured they must hear that a lot, though, so when the time came I told the salesman, who was young and slender and spoke very good English, that I collect religious garments from around the world.

“He’s actually a noted historian,” Julia said.

I looked at her, like, Fuck . If I wanted to be put on the spot like this, I’d have come with my sister Amy.

“I also study history,” the young man said. “What is your area of concentration?”

I panicked. “Sometimes I write for magazines,” I told him.

What I wanted was a black cassock. That’s the ankle-length robe Catholic priests wear. I wanted one because they’re slimming, they’re classic, and they’re beautifully made, at least at Gammarelli.

“We start by choosing the wool,” the young man said, handing me a book of fabric samples. “Then we select the buttons and take your measurements.”

A Gammarelli cassock generally takes months to make and involves several fittings. The price, which is steep, reflects the high quality of work that goes into it. That said, it’s not as involved as a bespoke suit—there are no pants to worry about, no zippers in this case—but it is intricately pleated and lined. I was still willing to go ahead with it and was being measured when the young man left the dressing room and returned with a cassock that was already finished but had never been collected. Perhaps the priest who ordered it had died, or had been sent to prison. Whatever the case, it fit me very well except for the length, which could easily be adjusted.

Next came the Roman collar. The outfit’s fine without it, I thought, until I added it and realized, Whoa, you really need the collar. Then came the fascia, and I got two—the classic black one and a scarlet model that a cardinal would wear.

“Is it against the law to dress like a priest?” I whispered to Julia as I did up the last of the thirty-three buttons, each of which symbolizes a year of Jesus’ life and leaves you wishing he’d been crucified at twelve, especially if, like me, you’re developing arthritis in your fingers.

I loved the idea of wearing my cassock on the street. Then I imagined myself walking along and being approached by a person in distress or, worse yet, by another priest asking me if I’d heard the news about Father O’Shea or Archbishop DiMaggio. “A cardiac arrest, not two minutes into the Eucharist!” What does one say in that situation?

“Oh, sorry, I honestly just liked the robe. It takes ten pounds off!”

The next day at the airport, awaiting my flight back to London, I saw a priest wearing the very outfit I had beside me in my suitcase. He was heavyset and bearded, his black hair gathered in a short ponytail. What’s it like to know that you can never marry or even date someone?, I wondered. More than that, what’s it like to have faith? To look at a solid argument against your God and say with absolute conviction, “I think I prefer it my way, thank you.”

My Greek grandmother was like that—kept a crucifix the size of a hand mirror in her bedroom and kissed it until her lips wore the plating off Jesus’ stomach. Cried when she saw Billy Graham on TV, even though she didn’t understand what he was saying. “Jesus blessie,” she’d whisper, crossing herself whenever we passed a church, any church. Tie two sticks together and her eyes would water. My father had maybe a third of her faith, and his children, for whatever reason, none.

I wanted to tell the priest at the airport that I had just met his boss, the Pope, that I’d shaken his hand and been given a rosary in a leather pouch. Without seeming creepy, I then wanted to ask what he was wearing beneath his cassock—underwear and a T-shirt? Cutoff shorts? Dress slacks? Jeans? Is it every man for himself, or are there rules?

I hated to think I was missing something. ♦

New Yorker Favorites

They thought that they’d found the perfect apartment. They weren’t alone .

The world’s oldest temple and the dawn of civilization .

What happened to the whale from “Free Willy.”

It was one of the oldest buildings left downtown. Why not try to save it ?

The religious right’s leading ghostwriter .

After high-school football stars were accused of rape, online vigilantes demanded that justice be served .

A comic strip by Alison Bechdel: the seven-minute semi-sadistic workout .

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

MORE SECTIONS

• Dear Deidre

MORE FROM THE SUN

• Newsletters
• Deliver my newspaper
• Sun Vouchers
• The Sun Digital Newspaper
• Racing Members Enclosure
• Fabulous Clothing

Terror plot to kill Pope Francis on visit to Indonesia uncovered as 7 suspects arrested after ‘swearing ISIS allegiance’

• Owen Leonard
• Published : 10:08, 7 Sep 2024
• Updated : 15:22, 7 Sep 2024
• Published : Invalid Date,

A TERROR plot to kill Pope Francis has been uncovered with Indonesian cops swooping on seven suspects believed to be ISIS-inspired.

The foiled ploy targeted the Pope during his visit to Indonesia, where he started a 12-day tour of the Asia Pacific.

The suspects were arrested across September 2 and 3 after cops were tipped off by concerned citizens.

Cops raided one of the alleged militant's houses to find bow and arrows, a drone and ISIS leaflets, according to The Straits Times.

The wannabe terrorists were apparently angered by the Pope popping into a Jakarta mosque.

Indonesian TV stations were reportedly asked not to broadcast the usual Islamic call to prayer while they showed Pope Francis' visit, enraging the alleged maniac Jihadis.

Read more on ISIS

Fifteen IS members armed with 'grenades' & 'suicide belts' killed in raid

'ISIS terrorist' who 'killed three' in festival knife rampage is charged

The suspects have been named only as HFP, LB, DF, FA, HS, ER and RS.

It's not yet clear whether they were all linked to one another.

A spokesman for Indonesia's terror-crushing unit "Densus 88" - or Detachment 88 - said threats were aired on social media.

Colonel Aswin Siregar said: “We have a mechanism to monitor and filter.

Most read in The Sun

Popular Brit holiday hotspot rocked by 'strongest earthquake in 60 years'

Dave Grohl reveals he welcomed a child 'outside of his marriage'

Legendary singer set for Eurovision comeback after devastating health battle

Moment nursery teacher 'hits girl, 3, before spraying liquid in her face'

"We had tip-off information from members of the public.

“Densus 88 has taken legal action against seven individuals … who made threats in the form of propaganda or terror threats via social media in response to the Pope’s arrival.

“There was also a threat to set fire to the locations."

Over his 12-day tour, the 87-year-old Catholic Church leader is visiting Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

He uses a wheelchair after suffering health issues over the last few years.

Speaking at the presidential palace in Jakarta earlier this week, he slammed religious extremism.

He said: "There are times when faith can be manipulated to foment divisions and increase hatred.

He added religious differences ought to be talked out, saying: "Prejudices can be eliminated, and a climate of mutual respect and trust can grow."

Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world, has grappled with terrorism for decades.

It burned during the infamous bombings on holiday hotspot Bali in 2002 and suffered attacks on Jakarta hotels in 2009.

READ MORE SUN STORIES

Gavin & Stacey cast film in wedding outfits… so are Nessa & Smithy getting married?

Eamonn Holmes MOVING IN with girlfriend just 4 months after Ruth split

Islamic extremism is again attracting headlines across the globe.

Taylor Swift had to cancel shows in Vienna , Austria amid threats, while a frenzied knife attack in Solingen, Germany recently shocked Europe.

ISIS could make comeback, former CIA chief warns

By Ellie Doughty

THE West could face a repeat of 9/11 if leaders don't act now to fight an ISIS resurgence, the former head of the CIA has warned.

Michael Morell, former director of the intelligence agency, believes the  world feels the same now  as it did before the devastating  terror  attacks of  September 11, 2001 .

Morell briefed President  George Bush  on the morning of 9/11 and stood with President  Barack Obama  10 years later in  the White House  situation room as US forces killed Osama Bin Laden.

When asked if he fears the possibility another attack like the Twin Towers horror, Morell told The Sun: "Yes. Absolutely. 100 per cent."

He said: "The feeling in the Bush White House and in the CIA after 9/11 is that we can never let this happen again.

"We need to do everything we can to protect America. We need to get back some of that feeling now to protect ourselves."

The former CIA boss even warned that the UK could be at a greater risk than the US for a terror attack. 

He told The Sun: “The threat to Europe and to your readers is even higher than it is in the US, even higher than what we say it is for the US."

"They've already tried it in Western Europe. They've already done it in Russia,” he said, referring to the Crocus City Hall attack in March.

• Pope Francis