Pope Francis on Wednesday praised former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as a far-sighted statesman who was committed to improving relations among nations.
In a message to Irina, Gorbachev’s daughter, Francis said he was “spiritually close in his moment of pain”.
He called her father an “esteemed statesman,” and said he was grateful for Gorbachev’s “far-sighted commitment to concord and fraternity among peoples as well as to progress for his own country at a time of important changes”.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who died 30 August in Moscow after a long illness, met several times with St John Paul II, and the two had a great appreciation for each other.
The two leaders met in 1989 and again in 1990 when Gorbachev was still president of the Soviet Union. At the time, Gorbachev was introducing political and economic reforms in his country that had ramifications still felt today.
Both men were key in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Joaquin Navarro-Valls, who served as papal spokesman for St John Paul II and often reported on their meetings, later called Gorbachev the most important figure in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Commemorating the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the wall, Navarro-Valls cited Pope John Paul’s support for the Polish labour union Solidarity as a key development in the pro-democracy movement in the region.
But, Navarro-Valls said, Gorbachev saw that the political movement in Eastern Europe was popular and unstoppable, and the Soviet leader avoided military repression and even verbal opposition.
“Both clearly understood the direction that history had begun to take. Both felt that freedom was not a political fact but a human dimension that was essential and not able to be suppressed,” Navarro-Valls said.
Navarro-Valls added that when Gorbachev first met with Pope John Paul in December 1989, less than a month after the wall’s collapse, the two leaders “understood each other immediately”.
“Both clearly understood the direction that history had begun to take. Both felt that freedom was not a political fact but a human dimension that was essential and not able to be suppressed.”
Pope John Paul pressed Gorbachev on the possibility of the Vatican and the Soviet Union exchanging diplomatic representatives, which he felt would aid in resolving religious freedom problems and other issues. Gorbachev responded positively, saying that “we approve such an approach” while cautioning against acting too quickly.
In the year that followed the papal audience, Gorbachev followed through on several issues raised by the pope. Principal among these was the law the Soviet Union enacted protecting religious freedom.
Gorbachev also allowed the Ukrainian Catholic Church to come out from underground and welcomed a Vatican ambassador to Moscow.
The then-Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, summed up what Gorbachev meant to the church: “We are always ready to dialogue. What was lacking was a partner. Now a partner exists.”
After St John Paul II died in 2005, Gorbachev, showing his appreciation, called him “the No. 1 humanist on the planet”.
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