“Be not afraid.” When Pope John Paul II uttered those words in 1979, they resonated far beyond his native Warsaw, Poland. His proclamation was not simply spiritual guidance, but a principled stance against Soviet tyranny. John Paul II gave voice to the oppressed and reminded us why moral clarity matters.
Sadly, that clarity was sometimes hard to find in the papacy of Pope Francis. Francis died Monday, aged 88.
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Francis’s responses caused outrage in Ukraine and beyond. Throughout the war, Francis consistently refused to name Russia or its president, Vladimir Putin, as the aggressor. In March 2024, he went so far as to suggest that Ukraine should have the “courage of the white flag” and negotiate. Even the Polish President Andrzej Duda, with his very Catholic electorate, called the pope’s remarks “unfortunate.”
Why was Francis a sympathizer with Putin’s aggression?
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Pope Francis was shaped by the country’s Peronist era. As a Jesuit in the 1970s, he was linked to the Guardia de Hierro, a group supporting President Juan Perón’s return from exile — an early signal of his affinity for Peronist ideas marked by populism, dislike of the United States, and skepticism toward capitalism. In spirit, Peronism preached social justice and empowerment. In practice, it descended into authoritarianism, censorship, and political repression. In Argentina, Francis was widely viewed as Peronist, and although he denied it in a 2023 book, he added, “If we had a Peronist conception of politics, what would be wrong with that?”
As my friend Shadi Hamid put it, Pope Francis was a revolutionary, but not in the spirit of John Paul II. His struggle wasn’t against authoritarianism, but against what he saw as Western cultural and political overreach. “The duty of Christianity for Europe,” he said, “is the service. And not colonization.” For Francis, it was always an unjust Western dominance, not Russian or Chinese imperialism, that demanded scrutiny. In doing so, Francis drew false moral equivalence between Western democracies and authoritarian regimes. And nowhere was this clearer than in the Pope’s comments on Ukraine.
In a 2022 interview, Francis tried to remove responsibility from Russia over its brutal war. He referred to NATO as “barking at the gates of Russia” and suggested Russia was “perhaps somehow provoked”. He warned against casting the conflict as a fairytale battle of “good guys vs. bad guys” and said it was “hypocritical” to arm Ukraine.
Comments in August 2023 caused further anger. Speaking to young Russian Catholics via video, the pope said, “You are the heirs of great Russia. Great Russia of the saints, of large Russia of Peter I, of Catherine II, of that empire. Great, enlightened, of big culture and big humanity. Never reject that heritage. … You are heirs of great Mother Russia. Go forward with it. … Thank you for your way to exist, for your way to be Russian.” Many Ukrainians listened to these comments and saw the pope equating the aggressor with the victim.
It didn’t end there. The world’s most powerful spiritual leader condemned Ukraine’s decision to restrict the Russian Orthodox Church, despite its well-established links to the Russian intelligence services. Yet, he also remained silent when Russian occupation authorities banned Greek Catholic churches, expelled clergy, and shut down charities on fabricated espionage charges. The Vatican also said nothing about the intimidation of evangelical Christians in Russian-occupied territories.
The pope’s moral blind spot wasn’t limited to Ukraine. He never condemned Beijing’s mass repression of Uyghur Muslims or of China’s underground Catholic Church. Imperialism, in Francis’s view, seemed to run only from West to East. If zoomed out, one can see this man as a standard Latin American leftist. That would be okay, if only he hadn’t been the leader of a church that is a touchstone for Western civilization.
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True, this is not the full story of the pontiff’s reign. His defenders cite his humanitarian work, his calls for peace, and his support for the everyday man. They underline his attempts to aid prisoner exchanges amid war and to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children forcibly relocated to Russia. His rhetorical reservations, supporters say, served his diplomacy.
But while those efforts were real, overly balanced statements on matters of grave moral consequence are not ultimately balanced — they are biased. On matters such as the war in Ukraine and the Uyghur genocide, to avoid taking a side is to take the wrong one.