The two popes

Russia’s war and the absence of U.S. leadership in the world present Leo with a mission impossible akin to the one John Paul chose to accept

A poster of Pope John Paul II hangs along a street in Lviv, where he held a Mass before some 1 million people during his pilgrimage to Ukraine in 2001. He remains the only pope to have visited the country. (c. Martin Kuz)

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Pope John Paul II arrived in Ukraine in 2001 for the country’s first-ever papal visit with deep empathy for its suffering under Russian rule in the 20th century. He had survived the same repressive regime in his native Poland in the decades after World War II, when Moscow smothered life and liberty across Eastern Europe.

Born Karol Wojtyła in 1920, the future pontiff saw Germany and the Soviet Union invade and partition his homeland as the war began in 1939. After Adolf Hitler reneged on a non-aggression treaty with Joseph Stalin, Poland endured a full-blown Nazi occupation from 1941 until Berlin’s defeat in 1945. During that time, Wojtyła covertly studied in an underground seminary in Krakow, and a year after the Third Reich fell, he entered the priesthood. Stalin by then had laid claim to the country as a vassal state in his expanding empire of tyranny.

The Catholic Church offered refuge from Soviet Communism’s worst deprivations and cruelties without blinding or numbing Wojtyła to the misery pervading Polish society in the postwar era. Moscow depleted the country of opportunity and hope, the vibrancy of its academic, cultural and political institutions vanishing within a gray miasma of fear and fealty. In a largely Catholic nation, the church, though also subject to Kremlin constraints, remained a lighthouse in the gloom.

The experiences informed Wojtyła’s benevolent, insistent advocacy on behalf of the people languishing behind the Iron Curtain when he ascended to the papacy in 1978. He commenced his crusade the next year with a June pilgrimage to Poland — a trip that Moscow tried in vain to scuttle through its puppet government in Warsaw. He drew massive crowds as he traversed the country and provided inspiration for the movement that would accelerate Eastern Europe’s liberation from Russia.

The pope held Mass in Warsaw’s central square before tens of thousands of worshippers, delivering a homily in which he mentioned the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier nearby. “In how many places in our native land has that soldier fallen?” he said. “In how many places in Europe and the world has he cried with his death that there can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map?”

There can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland. His words resounded across the continent, inside the Kremlin and, perhaps most crucially, within the heart of Lech Walesa. A shipyard electrician in northern Poland, Walesa had faced harassment and arrest during the 1970s for organizing “illegal” strikes and protests that sought higher wages and stronger labor protections.

In 1980, amid another standoff between shipyard workers and the government, Walesa helped negotiate a groundbreaking accord that guaranteed their right to strike and to establish an independent union. In a flourish captured by television cameras, he signed the pact using an oversized novelty pen with a clear top compartment that held a photo of the pope.

The union that Walesa cofounded, Solidarity, soon swelled to 10 million members, and in the ensuing years, its name became synonymous with the pro-democracy revolution that swept through the captive Soviet states. A decade after John Paul’s seismic Mass in Warsaw, the Berlin Wall crumbled. The Soviet Union disintegrated two years later. Walesa later credited that resonant homily on the central square with fortifying the courage of people in Poland and beyond to wrestle the Russian bear.

“The pope started this chain of events that led to the end of communism,” he recalled in 2003. “Before his pontificate, the world was divided into blocs. Nobody knew how to get rid of communism. He simply said: ‘Don't be afraid.’”

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The Warsaw Uprising Monument honors the memory of the Polish underground resistance and its doomed struggle to liberate the city from German occupation in 1944. (c. Martin Kuz)

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John Paul’s sole journey to Ukraine in June 2001 occurred a decade into the country’s independence and 20 years after he survived the most serious of two assassination attempts. (Speculation persists that the Soviet KGB orchestrated the gunman’s attack.) At an arrival ceremony in Kyiv, the pope congratulated the Ukrainian people on their freedom from “the oppression of totalitarian regimes” that had inflicted “an immense burden of suffering.”

Turning away from the anguish of the prior century, he looked ahead with a sense of optimism and toward the West, recognizing that, like Poland, “Ukraine has a clearly European vocation.” He went on, “A wish for the future rises up in my heart: that the Ukrainian nation may continue on this road of peace… . Without peace, no shared and lasting prosperity is possible.”

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer, wants neither peace nor prosperity for Ukraine. He first violated its sovereignty in 2014 by annexing Crimea and sending troops in unmarked uniforms into the country’s southeast to foment a separatist uprising. Rather than entice Ukrainians to return to the wretched Soviet past, the incursion intensified their desire to align with Europe, a reaction that surprised only Putin. His decision to launch a wider invasion three years ago proved that, now as throughout history, the Kremlin excels above all else at imposing “an immense burden of suffering” on Ukraine.

Moscow’s depredations present Pope Leo XIV, elected in last month’s papal conclave, with a daunting opportunity — a mission impossible — akin to the one John Paul chose to accept almost a half-century ago. Occupying the world’s most visible pulpit, the first American pontiff can bring the moral authority of the Holy See to bear on Russia and, in the process, act as a check on its revived imperialism.

Leo confronts a geopolitical landscape that is at once less and more complex than in John Paul’s time. Russia has tumbled from its “great power” perch of the post-WWII era, when the shadow of the hammer and sickle darkened much of Europe and Soviet domination appeared inviolable. Putin has devoted his quarter-century reign to recreating a semblance of that lost influence and aura. He has seized territory in Ukraine and Georgia; ordered military interventions in Chechnya, Kazakhstan and Syria; unleashed disinformation to sow election chaos and boost far-right leaders and parties in Europe, the United States and elsewhere; authorized acts of sabotage in Britain, France, Germany, Poland and other countries supportive of Ukraine; and expanded Russia’s presence in Africa.

The list might seem impressive in the dystopian context of contemporary fascism. Still, while he lionizes Stalin, Putin lacks his spiritual idol’s reach and mystique, his ability to exert control over and arouse fear in hundreds of millions of people outside Russia. Stalin loomed as a global colossus, assembling with cunning and brute force an empire of enslaved nations that lasted decades beyond his death in 1953. Putin resembles a midlevel mob capo desperate to curry favor with his boss in Beijing, cannibalizing his country’s future for the delusion of rekindling Soviet glory.

A diminished Russia — relative to 50 years ago — represents the good news for Leo. The bad news is that a gaping hole the size of the White House exists in Western leadership.

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A Soviet-era memorial in the eastern Ukrainian city of Staryi Saltiv honors soldiers from the area killed during World War II. (c. Martin Kuz)

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John Paul found common cause in fighting totalitarianism with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who for all his many flaws projected unwavering strength in opposing Moscow’s belligerence. Leo instead must contend with Donald Trump, a venal, unserious man of chronic emotional and moral weakness, and one who sympathizes with the aggressor in Russia’s genocidal war. Reagan famously denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” Trump fawningly hailed Putin’s invasion as “genius.”

In his first Sunday address at the Vatican a few weeks ago, Leo showed a willingness to take up John Paul’s brave struggle against predatory regimes and to implicitly shame the world for its inaction in stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine and Gaza. Speaking days after the 80th anniversary of Germany’s surrender in WWII, he referred to the “immense tragedy” of that conflict and warned of the rising risk of a sequel.

He then condemned Putin’s savagery in Ukraine — and, by extension, America’s inertia under Trump — without naming names, relying on the tactful language that long has defined the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts. “I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people,” Leo said. “May everything possible be done to reach an authentic, just and lasting peace, as soon as possible. Let all the prisoners be freed and the children return to their own families.”

His words echoed John Paul’s homily in Warsaw and arrival speech in Kyiv, suggesting that Leo will deploy his moral leverage to seek an end to the war with more vigor than Pope Francis displayed. The late pontiff elicited the ire of Ukrainians last year when he urged their country to have “the courage of the white flag.” The unsolicited advice to surrender sharpened perceptions in Ukraine that the Vatican had abandoned its historical tradition of “strategic ambiguity” and favored Moscow over Kyiv.

Early in the full-scale war, Francis, who never visited Ukraine during his 12-year tenure, insisted he needed to meet with Putin in Moscow before he could travel to Kyiv. (Putin failed to invite him.) The pope further theorized that the “barking of NATO at the door of Russia” provoked the invasion, parroting a Kremlin talking point. Francis later told a group of Catholic youth in St. Petersburg via video to “never forget your inheritance” as heirs to “great imperial Russia.” His comments riled Ukrainians, so often the victims of Moscow’s virulent colonialism down through the centuries and into the present day.

The collective impact of his various remarks obscured the Vatican’s work under Francis to deliver medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, expedite prisoner exchanges and pursue the return of kidnapped Ukrainian children from Russia. (The pope also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky three times after the war’s onset.) His death in April at age 88 received a muted response in Ukraine, and the subsequent news that he once privately funded the purchase of reconnaissance drones for its military passed with little notice.

The public diffidence of Francis and the blatant hostility of Trump toward Ukraine magnify the need for Leo to provide the enlightened leadership that John Paul exemplified in defying the presumption of Soviet supremacy. In this fraught moment, as a U.S. president deports legal immigrants, enacts travel bans, destabilizes military readiness, lowers cybersecurity defenses, endangers access to health care, removes women and minorities from positions of federal authority, defunds the arts and universities, curtails free speech, ignores the courts and coddles foreign dictators, the world requires a pope with the resolve to counter authoritarianism — whether in Russia, America, Israel or any other country.

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Destroyed Russian tanks stand outside St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv. (c. Martin Kuz)

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Leo sounds ready. Following his first Sunday address, the new pope spoke by phone with Zelensky, who days later traveled to Italy to attend the pontiff’s inaugural Mass and met with him afterward. During the service, Leo reiterated his plea for talks between Kyiv and Moscow in a manner that drew subtle yet unmistakable attention to Russia’s foot-dragging.

“The martyred Ukraine is waiting for negotiations for a just and lasting peace to finally happen,” he said. His repetition of the phrase “just and lasting peace” from his address a week earlier sent a clear signal to Moscow about the pope’s sentiments: Zelensky and European leaders use the phrase again and again when describing what negotiations should yield.

Leo talked with Putin yesterday, and in a rare move, the Vatican, which typically stays quiet about papal phone calls with heads of state, announced that the two men spoke. “The pope made an appeal for Russia to make a gesture that favors peace,” the Vatican said in a statement, “emphasizing the importance of dialogue for achieving positive contacts between the parties and seeking solutions to the conflict.” His early comments on the invasion, along with his standing offer for Putin and Zelensky to meet at the Vatican, have applied steady pressure on the Kremlin — a distinct and welcome departure from Francis’ mercurial approach.

The pope’s restrained insistence on negotiations is vital in two respects. In a matter of weeks, and while careful to avoid casting specific blame, he has succeeded in portraying Moscow as the foremost obstacle to ending the war, a step that Francis resisted from 2014 onward.

Putin brushes off Leo’s entreaties at his peril. Russia’s military will surpass an estimated 1 million casualties this summer, including 250,000 troops killed. The staggering toll helps explain why almost two-thirds of Russians now support peace talks. Add the prospect of growing economic discomfort at home and, even with absolute power in a predominantly Orthodox nation, spurning the Catholic pope’s overtures could pose dangers for an aging despot in a country weary of war.

The other critical aspect of Leo’s push for negotiations relates to Trump, who so far has refused to impose more economic sanctions on Russia or supply Ukraine with additional military aid. He and Putin also spoke Wednesday, four days after Ukraine’s audacious drone attack on airfields deep inside Russia that destroyed as many as 41 strategic bombers and other warplanes.

A week before their call, reacting to a series of horrific Russian drone strikes that killed dozens of Ukrainian civilians, Trump had warned Putin in a social media post that he was “playing with fire.” In a post yesterday, Trump recounted their talk as if he were a drive-thru attendant reading back an order rather than the commander-in-chief of the world’s most potent military.

“It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace,” he wrote. “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”

Hours later, Russia retaliated in its usual fashion, targeting residential areas with drones. An attack in northern Ukraine killed a 1-year-old child and seven other people. Today at the White House, Trump, his interest in brokering negotiations waning when there’s so much golf to be played, likened the war to two children “fighting in a park. …Sometimes you have to let them fight for a while.”

His craven, all-consuming narcissism has created a void of U.S. leadership on the international stage that Leo can fill without compromising the political neutrality expected of his office. His fluency in social media should serve his cause. A post on X last week that referred to Russia’s ongoing civilian slaughter showed the pope’s deftness at diplomacy by tweet. He tacitly rebuked the aggressor (Moscow) and the indifferent superpower/bystander (Washington) while conveying compassion for suffering innocents.

“The people of Ukraine have been struck by fresh, serious attacks,” he wrote. “I assure my prayers for all the victims, especially children and their families. I strongly reiterate my appeal to end the war and to support every initiative for dialogue and peace.”

Dating back to Trump’s first term and as recently as April, Cardinal Robert Prevost shared several articles on social media that criticized the president’s immigration policies. As Pope Leo XIV, his online savviness will amplify the Vatican’s influence, positioning him as a potential corrective to Russia’s and America’s digital disinformation and corrosive cynicism.

For now, the odds appear long that the pope can shame Putin into peace or light the way for Solidarity 2.0 to repel the renewed spread of fascism. But the odds appeared longer still that the Iron Curtain would fall, and John Paul went forward undeterred. Nearly a quarter-century ago, as he prepared to depart a democratic and independent Ukraine, he held an outdoor Mass before some 1 million people in the western city of Lviv.

“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,” he exhorted them. “This is the opportune time! This is the time for hope and daring!”

John Paul remains the lone pontiff to make a pilgrimage to Ukraine. May Leo one day be the second, and may Ukrainians one day inhabit a just and lasting peace entirely free from “great imperial Russia.”

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Etc.

— Russia’s retaliatory drone strike on the city of Pryluky after Ukraine’s stunning airfield attack added to a civilian death toll that has topped 13,100. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Trump administration has rescinded a particular U.S. anti-drone technology intended for Ukraine, ensuring that the Russians can kill even more civilians. The order came from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who this week also bailed on a NATO meeting with European counterparts to discuss supplying military aid to Ukraine. Evidently, between trying to look pretty and abetting genocide, he just didn’t have time.

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