‘Surrender means death’: Bishops reject Pope’s call

The statement was led by Archbishop of Kyiv whose priests have been tending their flocks in bomb shelters.

People wave Ukrainian flags at St Peter's square as Pope Francis addresses the crowd during his Angelus prayer on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Ukraine’s Catholic bishops have hit back at Pope Francis’s “run up the white flag’’ call, warning “surrender means death’’ – including for the church.

“It is worth mentioning that every Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory leads to the eradication of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, any independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and to the suppression of other religions and all institutions and cultural expressions that do not support Russian hegemony,’’ the bishops said in a statement. “Ukrainians cannot surrender because surrender means death. The intentions of Putin and Russia are clear and explicit.’’

The statement was led by Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Archbishop of Kyiv and Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, whose priests have been tending their flocks in bomb shelters, including in the cathedral basement.

Archbishop Shevchuk, 53, who was born when the church was still illegal under the former Soviet Union, gave up studying medicine and music as a young man to join the priesthood. Like Saint John Paul II decades earlier, he had to join a secret, underground seminary and later completed a doctorate at the Angelicum University in Rome. He is fluent in more than half a dozen languages, including English, and some Roman cardinals believe he has the makings of a future pope. Ukrainians were ”wounded yet unbroken, tired yet resilient”, the bishops’ statement said.

“The intentions of Putin and Russia are clear and explicit. The aims are not those of one individual: 70 per cent of the Russian population support the genocidal war against Ukraine, as does Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church,’’ the bishops wrote.

“The expressed objectives are articulated in concrete actions. In Putin’s mind, there is no such thing as Ukraine, Ukrainian history, language, and independent Ukrainian church life. All matters Ukrainian are ideological constructs, fit to be eradicated. Ukraine is not a reality but a mere ‘ideology’. The ideology of Ukrainian identity, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is ‘Nazi’.

“By calling all Ukrainians (who refuse to be Russians and accept Russian rule) Nazis, Putin dehumanises them. Nazis (in this case Ukrainians) have no right to exist. They need to be annihilated, killed.’’

The alleged war crimes in places occupied by Russian forces illustrated that the clear purpose of the war was to eliminate Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Recent history demonstrated there would be no true negotiations under Putin. “Ukraine negotiated away its nuclear arsenal in 1994, at the time the third largest in the world,’’ the bishops wrote. “In return Ukraine received security guarantees regarding its territorial integrity, including Crimea and independence, which Putin was obliged to respect.’’ But the agreement was “not worth the paper on which it was written’’.