ROME — Whenever President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia meets Pope Francis, he keeps him waiting. Thursday’s visit to the Vatican was no different.
Officials in Italy had locked down the capital, closed public parks and diverted traffic, preparations befitting a state visit by the Russian leader. He met Italian leaders and his old friend Silvio Berlusconi, but his most closely watched appointment was with the pope, amid tensions over Ukraine.
Francis is viewed by many European liberals as the greatest moral voice against the resurgence in populism and the demonization of migrants. But for many European nationalists and anti-migration politicians, the Russian leader is their alternate pope — the spiritual strongman of their movement.
“I may be speaking heresy, but President Putin looks more like a pope to me, for the way he is living Christianity, compared to the one who should to all effects be the pope,” said Gianmatteo Ferrari, the secretary of Lombardy Russia, a pro-Russian and Putin-adoring association. Its president, Gianluca Savoini, is a close ally of and unofficial Russia liaison for Italy’s anti-migration interior minister, Matteo Salvini.
“The greatest, proudest and most strenuous advocate of our Christian values is President Putin,” Mr. Ferrari said.
The tête-à-tête between the standard bearers of two competing views of Christianity on the continent, their third, took place in a private Vatican library, and came as an ideological polarization between nationalists and liberals cleaves the West.
“Putin represents a medieval, pre-enlightenment Christianity or at least pre-Vatican II view of Christianity,” said Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist of religions, referring to the Second Vatican Council that brought modern reforms into the church.
Mr. Introvigne said Mr. Putin had made it clear that he believed Western values, such as a belief in human rights and religious liberty, were not universal rights and did not necessarily apply in Russia. On the other hand, Mr. Introvigne said, “Pope Francis represented a more progressive and modern view of Christianity that accepted and promulgated the Western conception of human rights.”
For Mr. Putin, the meeting was a way to burnish his reputation as a global leader and show that he is willing to meet with a presumed spiritual adversary. And Francis believes that Mr. Putin’s cooperation is essential for the protection of Christians in the Middle East, where Russia is active. The pope is also pursuing unity, or at least better relations, with the Russian Orthodox Church.
In tyrpical fashion, Mr. Putin was an hour late (he also arrived 50 minutes late for their first meeting, in 2013, and more than an hour late in 2015). The men exchanged gifts: Mr. Putin gave Francis a CD of a not-yet-released a film, “Sin,” by the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, along with a book of photos from the film and an icon of Sts. Peter and Paul.
France gave the Russian leader an 18th-century etching of St. Peter’s Square (“So that you won’t forget Rome,” the pope said); a medallion commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I; a copy of the pope’s “Message for the World Day of Peace,” issued last December; and a document titled “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.”
Speaking through an interpreter, Mr. Putin told the pope: “Thank you for the time you have devoted to me. It was a very substantive, interesting discussion.”
In 2016, Francis met with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first such meeting of the two church leaders in about 400 years. But Francis is aware that without the support of Mr. Putin, those efforts are likely to go nowhere. Crucial to that conversation is Ukraine, a battlefield for religious and political identity.
In January, Ukraine broke from the Russian Orthodox Church it had been tied to for more than four centuries and started its own ecclesiastically independent Orthodox Church. Against Russian opposition, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, to which Ukraine had been loyal until 1686, recognized the Ukrainian church.
In reaction, the Russian Orthodox Church, which stood to lose a significant chunk of its parishes, said it would no longer recognize the Istanbul-based patriarch. Mr. Putin shares the opposition of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Moscow patriarch, Kirill I, to the break.
The meeting in the Vatican comes as Mr. Putin has taken to directly addressing Europe’s Catholics, many of whom are attracted to nationalist politicians. In a recent interview with The Financial Times, in which Mr. Putin declared the end of Western liberalism, he was asked whether religion would then play a greater role in national culture and cohesion.
“This is exactly why I will now say a few words about Catholics,” he said, embarking on what seemed like a defense of the traditions of the Catholic Church. “Sometimes I get the feeling that these liberal circles are beginning to use certain elements and problems of the Catholic Church as a tool for destroying the church itself,” Mr. Putin said. “This is what I consider to be incorrect and dangerous.”
This was music to the ears of traditionalists and hard-right nationalists, who are convinced that Francis — who has spoken inclusively of gay people and Muslim migrants — is that destructive element.
Mr. Putin has many fans in Italy, including the country’s de facto leader, Mr. Salvini, who has publicly professed admiration for the Russian leader. He has traveled to Mr. Putin’s political party events in Russia and once wore a shirt with Mr. Putin’s face on it at the Kremlin.
In an interview with the Milan daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, Mr. Putin said that Mr. Salvini and his League party had actively support the restoration of “full cooperation between Italy and Russia.” He added: “They are pushing for a rapid abolition of the anti-Russian sanctions introduced by the U.S. and the E.U. On this issue our points of view coincide. Salvini has a welcoming attitude towards our country.”
Mr. Putin also said Russia had no intention of getting involved in an arms race with the United States, called accusations that Russia had interfered with the American elections “absurd” and said similar claims of electoral interference in the European elections last May was meant “to continue to ‘demonize’ Russia in the eyes of ordinary European citizens.”
Some of Mr. Salvini’s close allies argue that the former K.G.B. official had supplanted Francis as Europe’s greatest defender of traditional Christian values. The most devout members of the Putin cult talk of the Russian leader in mystical terms, comparing him to the Katechon, a Greek word referring to a force that keeps the Antichrist at bay. They also make passing references to “Third Rome,” a 15th-century idea of manifest destiny for the Orthodox Church, in which Moscow would become the spiritual center of the true church after Rome and Constantinople.
Amid this backdrop, Francis has been careful not to antagonize Russia by taking sides in the conflict in Ukraine, or between the Ukrainian orthodox churches. Mr. Introvigne, the sociologist, said that Mr. Putin’s apparent opposition to religious liberty in Russia “could eventually endanger the Catholic minority.”
On Friday and Saturday, the pope will meet with the archbishop and other leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is in full communion with the pope. In a statement in May, the Vatican said the meeting would urge the leaders to support peace “in agreement, as far as possible,” with the Roman church and Orthodox Church.
Alexander Dugin, a Russian public intellectual and traditionalist who maintains a following among nationalists, neo-fascists and European identitarians, said he had noticed that the mysticism of the Russian Orthodox Church, to which he belongs, had drawn converts from Catholics frustrated by the liberalism of their church.
He said that some rank-and-file clerics in Rome also saw Mr. Putin as their protector. But not all Catholic traditionalists agree.
Roberto de Mattei, the president of the Lepanto Foundation — which is deeply critical of Francis for what is calls his failure to defend Europe’s Christian roots from Islam — said he suspected that the Russian leader was waging a “political operation” by trying to attract support on the European right with his talk of traditional values.
“My fear is there is a double game,” Mr. de Mattei said, adding that he felt stuck on a chessboard between Mr. Putin and Pope Francis, while “the West doesn’t have a real leader.”
Source : Nytimes
