2023-09-04 18:45:39
He Pope Francisco rejected this Monday in a press conference that he gave after returning from a four-day visit to Mongolia to “imperialisms that seek to impose their own ideology”while defining the Asian country as “a neighbor located between two powers” and reaffirming his “admiration” for the Chinese people and the “very good” Russian cultural heritage.
“There are imperialisms that seek to impose their own ideology. When culture is distilled and transformed into ideology, this is the poison“, denounced the pontiff aboard the flight that this Monday took him back to Rome from Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia.
“The transmission of culture is never imperialism,” he added when asked about his statements at the end of August in which he gave an example of the cultural period of the time of the Russian emperors Peter I and Catherine II and that had generated strong criticism of the Ukrainian government.
“I wasn’t thinking of imperialism when I said that,” sought to clarify the Pope. Last week, the Vatican had already specified through a note that the pontiff did not seek to exalt the emperors but rather the cultural production of his time.
In this context, Francisco asserted that “it is necessary to distinguish when it is the culture of a people or when it is the ideology of a philosopher or politician of that people.”
The Pope, during the press conference on the plane. Photo: EFE
According to the pontiff, this danger occurs “even in the Church, where ideology also sometimes gets in and separates it from the Holy Spirit.”
“An ideology is incapable of embodying itself in the people, it’s just an idea. When the ideology gains strength and becomes political, it often becomes incapable of dialogue, it becomes dictatorship. This is what imperialisms dowhich are consolidated with an ideology”, he developed.
“We can also distinguish in the Church between doctrine, which is never ideological, and ideology, which is separated from the people,” the Pope later stated.
When ideology gains strength and becomes political, it often becomes incapable of dialogue, it becomes dictatorship.
During a good part of the press conference, Francisco explained that his statements on Russian culture were given in “a dialogue with young Russians, to whom in the end I gave a message that I always repeat, which is that we must take over one’s own inheritance“.
“The same thing that I say everywhere; with this vision I seek to make a dialogue between grandparents and grandchildren; this was the message,” he argued, referring to his constant calls for an intergenerational dialogue.
“Russian heritage is very beautiful”
A second level of his statements, for the Pope, was when “to make the heritage explicit” he told them to get “the idea of Great Russia, because the Russian heritage is very good, it is very beautiful.”
“Think in the field of letters, of music, until you reach, for example, a (writer Fyodor) Dostoevsky of a mature humanism,” he exemplified, citing the author of “Los Idiotas” and other works, and recalled that he encouraged young people to “take charge of this humanism that developed in art, in literature”.
According to Francis, “the third plane was perhaps not happy, but speaking of Great Russia in a cultural rather than a geographical sense, what they taught us at school came to mind: Peter I, Catherine II,” he listed.
“The heritage of the great Russia, the Russian culture is of a very great depth,” the Pope said. Photo: Reuters
“Perhaps it is not fair (the comment), that the historians tell us,” he excused himself in that sense before the journalists who accompanied him on the tour.
admiration for china
“The heritage of great Russia, Russian culture is very deep. They had dark years, but the heritage was always there, close at hand,” he said.
In another passage of the talk, the Pope renewed the praise he had paid the Chinese people in Mongolia and acknowledged his “admiration” for them, although he made it clear that would like to “advance further” in terms of religious dialoguewithin the framework of the agreement signed in 2018 for the joint appointment of bishops but for which in five years only six prelates were nominated.
The Pope stressed that there is an “open” dialogue between the Holy See and Chinaalthough he expressed his desire to “advance more in the religious aspect to understand each other more”.
Thus, Francis showed his intention that “Chinese citizens do not think that the Church does not accept their own culture and values or that it depends on another foreign power”, seeking to bring peace of mind to the nearly 10 million Catholics in the eastern country, in the that for more than half a century the Communist Party had created a Church parallel to that of Rome, the Patriotic Association, to seek to limit the possible interference of other countries over their citizens through faith.
“Relations with China they are very respectful. I personally have great admiration for the Chinese people. Dialogue is open,” he stated after a trip in which he not only asked Chinese Catholics to be “good citizens” but also wished “unity and peace” to the president of that country Xi Jinping in two telegrams that he sent while flying over the territory of the Asian giant to and from Rome.
“For the appointment of bishops there is a commission in which the Chinese government works with the Vatican,” Francis recalled about the implementation of the agreement signed in 2018 and renewed in 2020 and 2022, but whose text is kept secret.
“The commission chaired by (Secretary of State Pietro) Parolin is doing well on this friendly path, and the Chinese government is also doing a good job,” he developed.
In this context, he also recalled that his envoy for peace in Ukraine, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, will go to China as part of the series of meetings he has already had in Kiev, Moscow and Washington, although there is still no set date.
After becoming the first Pope in history to visit Mongolia, he stressed that the Asian country has the conditions to establish itself as a bridge between Europe and the East since it has “the mystique of the third neighbor that favors this dialogue, which makes them move forward “.
“We can say that their land is between two great powers, Russia and China, and, for this reason, its mystique is to seek dialogue, not out of contempt for these two countries, with which they have good relations, but out of the desire for universality,” he highlighted about Mongolia.
Francis, 86, returned to Rome on Monday after a four-day visit to Mongolia during which he had political, social and cultural activities marked by his request for a world dialogue for peace, the request for a global “urgent commitment” by the climate and the deepening of interreligious dialogue, to the point that he called on leaders from all over Central Asia to unite against fundamentalism and violence.
With information from Hernán Reyes Alcaide, special envoy. telam
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