But First, the New Moby Dick Hunt has snagged another big [Russian] white whale:
NYTimes-March 16 2022-MADRID — Spain, which has pledged to seize the suspected superyachts of Russian oligarchs targeted for sanctions imposed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday impounded the third such vessel, one of the world’s biggest superyachts, in Spanish territorial waters this week.
The ship was impounded in the Spanish port of Tarragona, pending an inspection to establish its exact ownership, Spain’s transport ministry said in a statement. The ship, called the Crescent, was registered in the Cayman Islands.
The Spanish authorities have taken similar measures against two other yachts, the Valerie, which was in a maintenance yard in Barcelona, and Lady Anastasia, a yacht that was moored in Port Adriano, on the Spanish island of Majorca.
Spain’s hunt for Russian-owned superyachts comes after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the seizure of the Valerie on Monday and warned that “there will be more.”
There’s a significant religious struggle paralleling the war in Ukraine: Orthodox vs. Orthodox.
Also, the Vatican PR staff has been working overtime to scrub the image of Pope Francis, who has taken flak for quietude about the Russian invasion. Here are the stories:
National Catholic Reporter — Mar 16, 2022
by Christopher White
ROME — Pope Francis on March 16 spoke by video conference with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, a key backer of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine. In the call, the two religious leaders pledged their respective commitments to securing peace.
A Vatican communique stated that Francis rejected the justifications for the invasion as a “holy war,” saying “today we cannot speak like this.”
“Christian awareness of the importance of peace has developed,” said Francis. In recent weeks, Kirill has previously used religious language to justify his support for Russia’s military aggression.
According to the Vatican statement, the conversation focused “on the war in Ukraine and the role of Christians and their pastors in doing everything possible for peace to prevail.”
“We are pastors of the same Holy People who believe in God, in the Holy Trinity, in the Holy Mother of God: for this we must unite in the effort to help peace, to help those who suffer, to seek ways of peace, to stop the fire,” Francis told the Russian patriarch, according to the Vatican statement.
“Those who pay the bill for the war are the people, it is the Russian soldiers and it is the people who are bombed and die,” the pope continued. “The Church must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus.”
“Wars are always unjust. Because the one who pays is the people of God,” Francis continued. “Our hearts cannot help but cry in front of the children, the women killed, all the victims of the war. War is never the way. The Spirit that unites us asks us as pastors to help the peoples who suffer from war.”
An earlier statement from the Russian Orthodox Church said that the two parties had a “detailed discussion” of the situation in Ukraine.
“Particular attention was paid to the humanitarian aspects of the current crisis and the actions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church to overcome its consequences,” it continued. “The parties stressed the exceptional importance of the ongoing negotiation process, expressing their hope for the soonest achievement of a just peace.”
. . . The March 16 video conference between Francis and Kirill marked their first face-to-face reunion since the two men met in Havana, Cuba, in 2016.
That encounter, which was the first ever meeting between a Roman Catholic pontiff and the Russian Orthodox patriarch, seemed to signal a historic breakthrough in Catholic-Russian Orthodox relations and plans were underway for the two to meet in person again this summer.
Kirill’s support for Putin’s invasion has not only created new ecumenical tensions but led to an unraveling among Russian Orthodox churches around the world.
The Russian patriarch has sought to portray the invasion as an effort to defend against the moral relativism and decadence of the West and argued that Ukraine is part of the “canonical territory” of the Russian Orthodox Church.
To date, at least 160 Orthodox parishes in a dozen countries have sought to join other communions since the outbreak of the war.
While Kirill has since expressed his desire for an end to the conflict, he has refused to denounce Putin or Russia’s actions against Ukraine, despite pleas from religious leaders from around the globe.
Later in the day on March 16, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, celebrated a Mass for peace in St. Peter’s Basilica in the presence of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. . . . Parolin repeated the words of Pope Francis from his March 6 homily earlier this month.
“This is not just a military operation but a war,” said Parolin, again offering an explicit rejection from the Vatican of the Russian government’s repeated descriptions of their military activities as a “special military operation.”
Christopher White is the Vatican correspondent for NCR. His email address is cwhite@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @CWWhiteNCR.
NCR: After supporting Ukraine invasion, Russia’s Patriarch Kirill criticized worldwide
by Jonathan Luxmoore — Mar 15, 2022
Church leaders have appealed to Patriarch Kirill to intervene and ask Putin to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine.
WARSAW, POLAND — As Russian troops and tanks battled Ukrainian forces during the third week of their bloody invasion, prospects of peace appeared to be fading.
Meanwhile, amid the scenes of wanton destruction, the militant stance of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill also seemed to dash hopes of closer ties between his community and the Catholic Church.
“The vocation of every church is to recall basic Gospel principles — Kirill has not only abandoned this, but is actually sacralizing this cruel aggression,” Marcin Przeciszewski, veteran director of Poland’s Catholic Information Agency, told NCR.
“The old discourse about Catholic and Orthodox leaders sharing in the defense of traditional Christian values all looks like nonsense now,” said Przeciszewski. “The only values Kirill is defending are those of Russian imperialism.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armies invaded in the early hours of Feb. 24, triggering harsh resistance . . . .
The war followed a low-intensity conflict with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region after Moscow’s February 2014 forced annexation of Crimea, which left over 14,000 dead in eight years.
It also came in the wake of bitter religious disputes in Ukraine, where a new Orthodox church was granted independence in January 2019 by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds honorary primacy among leaders of the world’s 15 main Orthodox churches.
Russia’s Moscow Patriarchate bitterly rejected the move, insisting Ukraine, independent from Russia since December 1991, belonged to its “canonical territory.” . . .
A wise Friend wrote this week that they wanted to acknowledge on their 80th birthday this truth: Creation will receive all our suffering with blessings. Let us pray every day for the wisdom and gifted ministry to connect with all the forms of state sanctioned violence: oligarchic, hegemonic, capitalistic, militaristic. If we practice self love and love of our neighbors; how can we release them from our suffering?