By Robert W. Shaffern

Some months ago, I wrote on this site a column that highlighted the impact of the Russian invasion on the Eastern-Rite Catholics of beleaguered Ukraine. I pointed out that in the past, Russian expansion into Ukraine and the Carpathian Mountains badly damaged the churches of these rites.

This past week the pope not only drew attention to their plight but, in so doing, actually intensified the suffering of all Ukrainian people.

In a Swiss television interview (which will be released in full on March 20), Francis called for Ukraine to have "the courage of the white flag," a comment that struck many Ukrainians (and Catholics elsewhere) as a call for their surrender to end a war which has meant thousands of combat and civilian deaths, to say nothing of the widespread destruction of towns and villages.

Though the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Parolin, along with the Vatican press office have engaged in damage control - claiming that what the pontiff intended to say was that it was time to have the courage to negotiate - the impression remained that Francis had carelessly employed a symbol of surrender, which given the death and destruction perpetrated by Russia, appeared deeply offensive.

Ukrainian Catholic leaders, for example, quickly responded to the pope's remarks. The Permanent Synod of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) firmly protested saying that "Ukrainians won't surrender because surrender means death," something anyone who has been watching the news the past two years would have known well.

The synod went on to say that Russia's wicked intentions are clear and that "70 percent of the Russian population support the genocidal war against Ukraine as does Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church." In his younger days, Kirill was an asset. if not an outright agent, of the KGB.

As I pointed out in my earlier article, the synod also recalled that:

every Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory leads to the eradication of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, any independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church [to which most church-affiliated Ukrainians belong], and to the suppression of other religions and all institutions and cultural expression that do not support Russian hegemony.

The UGCC also invoked the 1994 Budapest agreement wherein Russia promised to respect Ukrainian territorial integrity in return for Ukraine's abandonment of its old Soviet nuclear arsenal. Why then, should anyone trust the Russians now?

The pope's invocation of a white flag deeply offends a people who well know what subjection to the Russians means. Both the Tsarist and the Soviet regimes persecuted the Eastern-Rite churches. The Bolsheviks sent numerous Eastern-Rite priests to the Gulag to suffer and die. The property of those churches was confiscated, so that what was left of the parishes was impoverished. The churches survived largely by going underground, only to resurface in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In light of that history, it's no surprise that Cardinal Parolin's weak response - that the white flag need not mean capitulation, but may also be a signal for negotiations - fell on deaf ears. The belligerent that raises the white flag does so almost always out of weakness rather than strength, and so must accept disagreeable terms dictated by whatever diplomatic instrument is used to end hostilities.

Parolin also said that as the unjust aggressor in this war, the responsibility for negotiations lies mostly with Russia. Which raises the question: If the pope agrees, why did he not mention that in his interview?

In the past, the pope has stated that the Catholic churches of the Eastern Rites are an outdated channel for the Orthodox churches of, say, Russia or Greece, to be reunited with Rome. Eastern Catholics, of course, did not appreciate being characterized as a kind of obsolete form.

Francis's careless comment about a white flag has only served to further alienate Ukrainian Catholics from Rome...