Pope Francis and Vladimir Putin met for the third time as the Russian president began his state tour in Italy on July 4. After the Vatican meeting, Putin met the Italian president and prime minister and attended a conference on Italian-Russian dialogue at the Foreign Ministry.
The landmark meeting, which lasted just under an hour, focused largely on “various questions of relevance to the life of the Catholic Church in Russia,” according to a Vatican statement following the July 4 meeting. Other areas touched on, they also discussed “the ecological question and various themes relating to current international affairs, with particular reference to Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela.”
The meeting came a day before the Pope held talks in Rome with leaders of Ukraine’s Greek-Catholic Church to discuss the conflict between government forces and Russian-backed separatists, which began in 2014. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church formally split from the Russian Orthodox Church last year, amid tensions between Kiev and Moscow over the war in eastern Ukraine. Over 10,000 people have been killed and more than one million people have been displaced as a result of the conflict.
In a speech to the bishops Friday, Francis said Ukraine for five years has been marked “by a conflict which many call ‘hybrid,’ composed as it is of acts of war where those responsible are camouflaged.”
Putin and Francis met for the first time since Francis met briefly with Patriarch Kirill I at Havana airport in Cuba in 2016, after almost 1,000 years of religious division between the western Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The Great Schism of 1054 split the followers of Christ into Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism. The Russian Orthodox Church is the largest in the Orthodox world, with 165 million faithful out of some 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.
The Holy See and the Russian Federation re-established bilateral relations in 1990 and re-established full diplomatic relations in 2009. While some observers have said Putin’s visit could be a prelude to a first-ever papal visit to Russia, Putin’s foreign policy aid said on July 3 it’s not on the agenda.
When Putin and the Pope talked at the Vatican, it was more than a meeting between leaders, but a meeting between two competing views of Christianity in Europe and the role of liberalism in global politics.
Many see the Pope as a strong moral voice against the resurgence of populism and anti-migration policies. In his annual “state of the world” address last January, he warned against a global rise of nationalist and populist movements and criticised countries that use isolationist actions to try to solve the migration crisis. “The reappearance of these impulses today is progressively weakening the multilateral system,” he told envoys from 183 countries.
Meanwhile, many right wing, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT politicians venerate Putin as the spiritual strongman of their movement against what they consider the destruction of national sovereignty by liberal values. In an interview with the Financial Times on June 29, Putin called liberal ideology, which has underpinned Western democracy since the end of World War II, obsolete. He said “the liberal idea” had “outlived its purpose” as the public turned against immigration, open borders and multiculturalism.
Putin’s visit to Italy comes after recently addressing Catholics, many of whom are attracted to nationalist politicians. In his FT interview, Putin was asked whether religion would play a bigger role in national culture and cohesion. “This is exactly why I will now say a few words about Catholics,” he said, seemingly defending Catholic church traditions. “Sometimes I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the church itself,” Putin said, adding that he considers it “incorrect and dangerous”.
This resonated with right wing nationalists around the world, who conform to the vision of Christianity promoted by Putin and Russian Orthodox Church, which is opposed to gay marriage and protecting LGBTQ rights. US President Donald Trump banned transgender soldiers, and the Brazil’s Jair Bolsanaro has removed LGBTQ rights from the human rights ministry.
The Russian president has strong supporters in Italy, including Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has publicly expressed admiration for Putin’s leadership qualities.
After Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte met with Putin on July 3, he said Rome was working “to create conditions for overcoming this state of relations between the EU and Russia, which is not good for Russia, nor for the EU nor for Italy, which would otherwise improve our economic and trade relations.”
Italy’s Russia-friendly Italian government, composed of the populist 5 Star Movement (5MS) and far-right League parties, took office in 2018. It has consistently supported the easing of EU sanctions against Russia, that have been in place since 2014 following its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and its support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
Tensions between Russia and the West have escalated in recent years over issues including the Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts, Moscow’s alleged meddling in other countries’ elections, and the nerve agent attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the southern English city of Salisbury.
Putin has acknowledged that sanctions have cost Russia an estimated $50 billion, but said the EU nations have suffered even greater damage. Italy has been hit particularly hard. The country’s exports to Russia used to be worth almost €10bn a year before the sanctions and they are worth less than $8.6 billion a year these days and Italy’s food companies have suffered losses of more than €1.1 billion in the past five years.
While Putin may have found an ally in Italy, other politicians have rallied in defence of liberalism. Speaking at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, the European Council President Donald Tusk said: “I have to say that I strongly disagree with the main argument that liberalism is obsolete. We are here as Europeans also to firmly and univocally defend and promote liberal democracy. “Whoever claims that liberal democracy is obsolete also claims that freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete,” Tusk said.
On Downing street, Theresa May had told Putin that “the UK would continue to unequivocally defend liberal democracy and protect the human rights and equality of all groups, including LGBT people.”
Photo: William Pearce