The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, Pope Francis’ ambassador to Ukraine, to express disappointment about papal comments regarding the death of Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with a nationalist Russian TV channel.
In an 25 August briefing, Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba told journalists that summoning a nuncio to the ministry was unprecedented. He said more details about the meeting would be forthcoming.
“I will say frankly that the Ukrainian heart is torn by the pope’s words. It was unfair,” Kuleba added.
At the end of his general audience talk in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican on 24 August, six months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Pope Francis repeated his calls for peace and spoke of how so many people were affected by war. He noted that no nationalities were spared when it came to children becoming orphans in war, and he said “war is madness” on all sides.
As an example, the pope spoke of “that poor girl flown into the air because of a bomb under her car seat in Moscow. The innocent pay for war. The innocent.”