On Friday afternoon, some of the hundreds of thousands of young Roman Catholic pilgrims filing into a park in Lisbon to pray with Pope Francis stopped to embrace their Ukrainian peers standing on a small hill, holding blue-and-yellow flags and wearing black shirts featuring the faces of children killed in Russia’s invasion of their country.
“So many people are showing us support,” said Anastasiia Koval, 17, who wept as young Catholics from Portugal, Spain, Italy, the United States and many other nations hugged her. A priest stopped to wipe away her tears. “The pope — I don’t think so.”
Since declining to name Russia as the aggressor early in the war, Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people, even calling them “martyred.” But his methods of pursuing peace — including a secret mission that baffled Ukrainian officials, and a reluctance to more fulsomely condemn Russia and President Vladimir V. Putin — have bothered many of the Ukrainian Catholics who came to this week’s major meeting of Catholic youth from around the world.
Before his arrival on Saturday in Fátima, in central Portugal, the Vatican said that Francis would pray there for peace in Ukraine and the world while bringing Russia’s invasion back into view. But after praying silently in front of the town’s shrine and a statue of the Virgin Mary, he made no mention of a prayer for peace or Ukraine, and instead reiterated his central World Youth Day message that there is room for everyone in the church.
The pope said “nothing,” said the Rev. Roman Demush, who leads the youth ministry office for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. “The war should make us scream, and it silences.”
The Vatican said that the pope had prayed “silently for peace” and tweeted from the pope’s account his prayer, which didn’t name either country but consecrated the church and world, “especially those countries at war,” to Mary.
Fátima itself has links to Russia that go back more than a century. The town is best-known in Catholic tradition for three secret, apocalyptic prophesies said to be delivered to three children by an apparition of the Virgin Mary in 1917, when it was a poor village. One of the children went on to become a nun, and said that one prophecy had been that peace would reign on Earth if the pope and the world’s bishops converted Russia, which became Communist in the year of the apparitions, and consecrated the nation to the “Immaculate Heart of Mary.”
The prophecy has drawn renewed attention since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the roughly 500 young Ukrainians who made the trip to World Youth Day in Lisbon this week started their pilgrimage in Fátima. Fifteen of them also met with Francis at the Vatican embassy in Lisbon.
But for those hoping that he might take up their cause at World Youth Day, there was disappointment, just as there was last year when Francis delivered a prayer for peace that consecrated both…
2023-08-05 20:48:06
Article from www.nytimes.com
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