Surrender would bring more suffering

Pope Francis urged Ukraine to raise “the white flag.” He ignores the will of its people and its priests — and the legacy of John Paul II.

A Russian missile strike last summer inflicted heavy damage to the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine. (c. Martin Kuz)

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A poll conducted in Ukraine at the end of last year found that almost 90 percent of Ukrainians continue to believe the country will triumph over Russia. Their defiant optimism might surprise Pope Francis.

A few days ago, in an interview with a Swiss newscaster, the pope urged Ukraine to consider surrendering. “The strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said. He suggested that “international powers” could mediate, as if Ukraine should recuse itself from deciding its own future.

“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well,” Francis added, “you have to have the courage to negotiate.”

His unsolicited advice exasperated Ukrainians and their allies. “Our flag is a yellow and blue one,” wrote Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, on X. “This is the flag by which we live, die, and prevail. We shall never raise any other flag.”

Kuleba’s counterpart in Poland, Radosław Sikorski, offered an idea to Francis. “How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine?” Sikorski wrote on X. “Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations.”

The pope’s comments reminded me of a much different sentiment I heard last summer in Ukraine from another man of the cloth who, unlike Francis, must cope directly with the terror of Russia’s war. Five days before I met Father Myroslav Vdodovych, head priest of the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, a Russian missile strike gutted the church’s vast interior.

When we talked, Father Myroslav wore a blue hard hat as workers swept up debris, moving in and out of sunlight slanting through enormous holes in the roof. Charred remnants of paintings, mosaics, chandeliers and pews stood in piles. The damaged altar, leaning to one side, appeared about to collapse.

Father Myroslav Vdodovych, head priest of the Transfiguration Cathedral in Odesa, Ukraine. (c. Martin Kuz)

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Within hours of the attack, hundreds of volunteers with brooms and shovels in hand showed up to clear away rubble inside the Ukrainian Orthodox church. Father Myroslav saw in their reaction the resolve of a people who have survived centuries of Russian brutality and who understand the eternal threat that Moscow poses to their sovereignty.

“We will weather this ordeal as before. We look ahead,” he said. I wondered if the airstrike had provoked a crisis of faith for him and his congregants. He shook his head — it was just the opposite. “The belief in our victory strengthens our belief in God.”

The cathedral attack carried the echo of history. In 1936, Russian dictator Josef Stalin ordered the demolition of the church that opened in 1809 as part of his campaign to eradicate religion and religious expression across the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Putin presents himself as deeply pious, wielding his Russian Orthodox faith with practiced cynicism to justify his “holy war” against Western “satanism.” But feigned religiosity aside, the Russian president is Stalin’s true heir, a genocidal despot untouched by morality whose invasion has damaged or destroyed more than 500 religious sites across Ukraine.

The bombing of the Odesa cathedral occurred 20 years after it was rebuilt and consecrated following the Soviet empire’s demise in 1991. The fall of communism across Central and Eastern Europe freed hundreds of millions of people from Russia’s manacles, a seismic upheaval in which Pope John Paul II emerged as an essential figure.

Born Karol Wojtyła in 1920, John Paul knew firsthand the ravages of fascism and communism, enduring the occupation of his native Poland by the Germans and Soviets during and after World War II. The public empathy he displayed throughout the 1980s for those trapped behind the Iron Curtain endeared him to Ukrainians. Traveling to the country in 2001, a decade after it gained independence, he drew some 1.5 million people for an outdoor mass held in the western city of Lviv.

A memorial statue of Pope John Paul II on the grounds of Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, Poland. (c. Martin Kuz)

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In an address at the city’s airport to close his five-day visit, he hailed the country’s persistence in fighting tyranny. “Thank you, Ukraine, who defended Europe in your untiring and heroic struggle against invaders,” the pope said.

He went on, “Even if you still feel the painful scars of the tremendous wounds inflicted over endless years of oppression, dictatorship and totalitarianism, during which the rights of the people were denied and trampled upon, look with confidence to the future.”

John Paul’s steadfast advocacy for national autonomy and his intuitive compassion for Ukrainians, coupled with his message of hope for the post-Soviet era, contrasts with the equivocation and defeatism that Francis conveys. The pope who speaks of “the courage of the white flag” — rather than “an untiring and heroic struggle against invaders” — has lacked the courage to set foot in Ukraine, where Russia has killed so many and destroyed so much.

Surrendering to Putin would condemn Ukraine to generations of suffering. The white flag would signal a return to the ruinous Soviet past that John Paul himself survived and from which he wanted to liberate the countries held hostage by Moscow. A shared awareness of that dark history illuminates the undying desire of Ukrainians to live free.

“Ukraine is a peaceful country — we have never invaded another nation,” Father Myroslav said. “But Russia should know: People who live by the sword will die by the sword.”

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Etc.

— Russia’s sham presidential election taking place this weekend has seen poll workers accompanied by Russian soldiers going door-to-door to collect votes in occupied regions of Ukraine (gift link). I recently wrote about another impossible choice that Putin has forced on people in those regions for New Lines Magazine.

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