Pope Francis impliedly criticised Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who supports the invasion of Ukraine and has abstained from a gathering of religious leaders, when he remarked on Wednesday that God does not lead religions into war.
Francis spoke at the Seventh Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on his second day in Kazakhstan. This gathering of religious leaders from various faiths includes Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and others.
The absence of Kirill from the congress stands out.
He was supposed to go but later cancelled.
Delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church was sent.
Francis said this while addressing a large round table in the Independence Palace, a massive modern steel and glass building in the capital of the former Soviet republic. ‘God is peace. He guides us always in the way of peace, never that of war,’ Francis said.
The only means approved by God and deserving of man are encounter, dialogue, and patient negotiations, he said. ‘Let us commit ourselves, then, even more to insisting on the need for resolving conflicts not by the inconclusive means of power, with arms and threats, but by the only means blessed by God and deserving of man.’
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