Pope Francis on Wednesday linked the suffering of Ukrainians now to the 1930s 'genocide artificially caused by Stalin,' when the Soviet leader was blamed for creating a man-made famine in the country believed to have killed more than 3 million people.
Academic opinion remains divided about whether the famine constitutes a “genocide,” with the main question being whether Stalin intentionally wanted to kill Ukrainians as an attempt to quash an independence movement against the Soviet Union, or whether the famine was primarily the result of official incompetence along with natural conditions. Regardless, the “great famine” seeded lingering Ukrainian bitterness toward Soviet Russian rule.
The Vatican, in its 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, lists Ukrainians along with Armenians and Jews as victims of 20th century genocides and said “Attempts to eliminate entire national, ethnic, religious or linguistic groups are crimes against God and humanity itself, and those responsible for such crimes must answer for them before justice.”
Francis has repeatedly called for peace and an end to the war, has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine and has called incessantly for prayers for the “martyred” Ukrainian people. But he has generally declined to assign blame or even name Russia or President Vladimir Putin, and has repeated the Kremlin’s complaints that NATO was “barking at its door” in its eastern expansion.
According to the Holomodor Museum, 16 states in addition to Ukraine have recognized the famine as genocide: Australia, Ecuador, Estonia, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, the United States and the Vatican. Some other countries, such as Argentina, Chile and Spain, have condemned it as “an act of extermination.”Francis in 2015 riled Turkey when, from the altar of St.
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