Pope Francis warns pro-war Russian patriarch not to be 'Putin's altar boy'

Source: CNN

Pope Francis warns pro-war Russian patriarch not to be 'Putin's altar boy'

By Delia Gallagher, CNN
Updated 1451 GMT (2251 HKT) May 4, 2022

Rome (CNN) — Pope Francis warned the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, not to become "Putin's altar boy," he said in an interview this week.

In his strongest words to date against the pro-war Patriarch, Francis also slammed Kirill for endorsing Russia's stated reasons for invading Ukraine.

"I spoke to him for 40 minutes via Zoom," the Pope told Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published Tuesday. "The first 20 minutes he read to me, with a card in hand, all the justifications for war."

"I listened and told him: I don't understand anything about this," said the Pope. "Brother, we are not clerics of state, we cannot use the language of politics but that of Jesus."

"The Patriarch cannot transform himself into Putin's altar boy," the Pope said.

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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/04/europe/pope-francis-patriarch-kirill-ukraine-invasion-intl/index.html