Pope urges peace, not politics in call to Russian patriarch

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis stressed the need for religious leaders to preach peace, not politics in a video call Wednesday with the head of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first known communication between the two Christian leaders since the start of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The call was all the more remarkable because Francis and Kirill have only met once — at the Havana airport in 2016 — in what was then the first encounter between a pope and Russian patriarch in over 1,000 years.

The Vatican said Francis rejected the concept of a “just war” and stressed the need for pastors to find a path to peace. A Vatican statement said both men agreed that the church "must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus” and stressed the importance of negotiations to reach a cease-fire.

“Those who pay the price for the war are the people, it is the Russian soldiers and the people who are bombed and die," the Vatican quoted Francis as saying.

Wednesday's call came just hours after Francis evoked during his weekly general audience the specter of a “final catastrophe” of an atomic war that would extinguish humanity. While Francis didn’t reference Ukraine explicitly in that part of his speech, he did elsewhere call for prayers for Ukraine and for God to protect its children and forgive those who make war.

Francis’ long-term goal to improve relations with Kirill and avoid antagonizing the Russian Orthodox Church had explained his initially tepid responses to the Feb. 24 start of the Russian invasion. He has since stepped up his denunciations, demanding “an end to this massacre,” and labeling the invasion an “unacceptable armed aggression.”

But he has not condemned Russia by name for the onslaught or publicly urged Kirill to use his influence with Russian President...