The Vatican’s secretary of state, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin. (Credit: AP Photo, File)
ROME — While several Western countries, including the United States, have given Ukraine permission to use its weapons on movements in Russian territory, the Vatican’s most level-headed diplomat warned that such measures would mark a serious escalation in the war in Ukraine and constitute a “worrying situation. “”Situation. perspective.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of an e-book launch in Milan this week, Italian Cardinal Piero Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said of NATO’s use of weapons against Russia: “I think it worries anyone who cares about the fate of our world. “
“This could lead to an escalation that no one will be able to control, and that’s a worrying prospect,” he said.
Parolin in Milan for the presentation of the e-book “At the service of Italy and the Pope”, about the Italian banker Bernardino Nogara, founder of the so-called “Vatican Bank”, whose official name is Institute for the Works of Religion. .
Parolin’s comments come as members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allow Ukraine to use the weapons they have been provided with on targets on Russian territory.
Discussions on the matter have intensified days after Russia introduced a new offensive in Kharkiv, the latest in its efforts to advance Ukraine after launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has suggested to alliance members that they lift restrictions on the use of the military provided to Ukraine, allowing Kyiv to strike “legitimate military targets” inside Russia.
Similarly, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in early May that Ukraine could simply use London-supplied weapons against targets in Russia and that it was up to Kyiv whether or not to do so.
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron, during a five-day stopover in Germany, said: “We deserve to allow them to neutralize the military sites from where missiles are fired, the military sites from where Ukraine is attacked. “
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz supported this stance at a joint press conference with Macron, which was also backed by several Eastern European NATO members.
U. S. President Joe Biden on Thursday partially lifted restrictions on how Ukraine can use military materials shipped through the United States, signaling a partial move toward U. S. weapons in Russia.
In response, Russia’s most sensible security official, Dmitry Medvedev, warned that he was in a position to retaliate if Western weapons were used, saying, “Russia considers all long-range weapons used through Ukraine to be in a position directly controlled by the armies of NATO countries. “
“This is not help from the army, it is participation in a war that opposes us,” he said, adding that “such moves may well be a casus belli,” that is, an act that provokes a war.
Medvedev said it would be a “fatal mistake” on the part of the West to think that Russia is not in a position to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and alluded to moves through unidentified hostile countries with strategic nuclear weapons: “This is, unfortunately, neither intimidation nor deception.
Regarding the Holy See’s intervention in the war in Ukraine, Parolin said that “we are concerned at the humanitarian level, especially about the factor of the return of young Ukrainians to their homeland. “
Collaboration on this front began with Bologna’s Cardinal Matteo Zuppi’s stopover in Moscow last summer as Pope Francis’ official peace envoy for the war in Ukraine, he said, stating that Zuppi’s project “is not moving very quickly, it is still bearing fruit. “
In his role as Ukraine’s peace envoy, Zuppi has traveled to Moscow, Kyiv, Washington D. C. and Beijing, mainly to promote humanitarian agfinish. The Vatican has continually come forward to mediate in the conflict, but the Ukrainian government has insisted that it does not want mediation and that any peace plan to end the war will have to be in line with its terms.
Parolin also called for participation in this month’s European parliamentary elections, saying the church is “never party-oriented” and, as such, “speak for or against either. “
However, he stressed the importance of the participation of European citizens in the vote, “because it means implementing and exercising democracy”.
At the same time, Parolin, echoing the considerations of many European bishops, stated that citizens will also have to “take into account the values of applicants that are close to and similar to Catholic sensibility. I would say that those are the principles that we will have to abide by as far as we are concerned.
Follow Elise Ann Allen on X:@eliseannallen
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