In his homily for the concluding Mass for World Youth Day in Lisbon on the 6th of August, earlier this year, Pope Francis acknowledged the fears of young people who “have great dreams” but fear they might not come true, who may be discouraged, or who feel that their efforts are not enough. On the 25th of August, young Russians gathered for the All-Russian Meeting of Catholic Youth in St. Petersburg to enjoy a video speech in which the Pope highlighted the Lisbon WYD’s motto: “Mary got up and went in haste.” He, as expected, talked of peace, of “God’s transforming power,” and of dialogue between young and old. He ended unexpectedly, however, adding a jewel to the collection of his stunning off-the-cuff remarks:
Never forget your inheritance. You are the heirs of the great Russia. The great Russia of the saints, of the kings, of the great Russia of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, that great imperial Russia, cultivated, with so much culture and humanity.
Was the Pope’s commendation a constituent of a bespoke agenda that he wanted to recommend to young Catholics in today’s Russia? Francis’ off-the-cuff remarks are a significant part of his teaching, and as such, they cannot be ignored. Sketchy by nature, they require an in depth analysis as scattered pieces of Francis’ magisterium. I take the liberty of examining the call to greatness in reference to two names Francis mentioned—Tsar Peter I and Empress Catherine—both of whom bore the title ‘The Great,’ traditionally used to designate rulers who were considered exceptional or outstanding in their achievements. I ought to state from the outset that my analysis is biased both due to the fact of my being Polish and my personal rejection of any historical narratives that support the Vatican Ostpolitik.
Peter ‘the Great’
Peter I, the first Russian Tsar to adopt the title of ‘Emperor,’ was also bestowed with the title of ‘The Great’ in 1721, four years before his death, by the Russian Governing Senate. Henri Troyat, the French author of Peter’s popular biography, portrays him as a simpleton who delighted in gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery, was in love with European civilization, and wanted to bring Russia into it by force. In his passion for modernization, the emperor overthrew old customs with incredible ferocity, cutting off beards and imposing European clothes and views on his countrymen. After his first tour of Western Europe, he proceeded personally to shave his boyars’ beards off, later imposing a notorious tax on all those who chose to keep their facial hair untrimmed. At the age of 21, the young tsar stopped observing the Church fasts, and it was at this time that he refused to follow the time-honoured Orthodox tradition of growing a beard to resemble Jesus Christ. There wasn’t much resemblance anyway. This symbolic rejection of the call to be like Christ translated into the ruler’s policies that mark his supposed ‘greatness.’
The tsar carried out radical reforms in administration, law, finance, and the economy. He also sacrificed the lives of thousands by building a new capital city on the swamps, Saint Petersburg. The pragmatic despot also laid the foundations for modern industry, roads, schools, and agriculture, but all at the cost of enslaving the nation to a corrupt bureaucracy in Peter’s envisioned paradise. His hasty and drastic Westernization program changed the course of Russian history and laid the foundation for secular culture to flourish, leading to a serious and lasting identity crisis among the higher class (later to be meditated upon by almost everyone’s beloved Russian writers of the 19th century).
In short, modernization, being the obvious key principle to Peter’s reign, was paired with ruthless means and methods to serve this overarching goal. Put differently, being ‘great’ is about modernization. This is not an unlikely thought to appear in the mind of the Argentinian pope. An American historian of Russia, James Cracraft, believes that the reign of Peter produced changes that amount to a revolution in Russian culture. Indeed, its cruelty preceded and foreshadowed the revolution of the Bolsheviks.
There is something else about Peter’s reign that Pope Francis might have highlighted when addressing his young Russian audience. Peter the Great’s modernizing efforts led to Church reform. The tsar apparently focused on Church governance only. He did not abandon Eastern Orthodoxy but started a process of westernization or modernization of the clergy and their theological education. The curriculum for the clergy heavily emphasized Latin and introduced subjects similar to those taught at Jesuit academies in Poland at that time. More important, however, were his reforms of how Church government was to work.
Peter’s ‘Church reform’ looks a lot like what we might call ‘synodality’ today. Peter replaced the patriarch of Moscow, not restored until 1917, with the Holy Governing Synod and made the Church effectively a department of state. The Church was no longer governed by a patriarch or metropolitan, but instead it came under the control of this committee known as the Holy Synod, which was composed both of bishops and lay bureaucrats appointed by the Russian emperor. The ‘synodality’ model that pleased Peter replicated the state-controlled synods or consistories of the Lutheran Church in Prussia and Scandinavia. Every well-educated young Russian in Pope Francis’ audience on the 25th of August will have associated the reforms of Peter the Great with the ‘Synodal Path’ introduced by the Argentinian pope. Perhaps, then, this was the message the pope’s remark was meant to convey: to be great, just like Peter, reform the Church and love the Synodal Path.
One very ‘great’ thing about Peter was his great hatred for the Greek Catholic monks, that is, those in union with Rome and typically called the Basilians. One day in 1705, the tsar stormed their monastery in Polotsk, tore open their church’s tabernacle, dumped the Sacred Eucharistic Host on the floor, and then personally murdered the monastery prior, Theophane, who tried to retrieve the Host. Then, when Peter found out that the relics of St. Josaphat had been successfully removed from the monastery, he destroyed all the icons of the saint. The monastery’s church, the Cathedral of Divine Wisdom, was, by order of Peter I, turned into an ammunition and gunpowder warehouse. A few years later, during an explosion, the building, dating from the 11th century, was destroyed. It would be too much to expect the Argentinian pope to know any of the above, but the facts remain. To anyone who knows more than the pope about Russian history, Francis’ association of Peter with the Russian inheritance of ‘culture’ and ‘humanity,’ which that tsar did so much to undermine, amounts to slander. Let’s have a look at Catherine, who directly followed Peter in Francis’ remarks.
Catherine ‘the Great’
Catherine was called ‘the Great’ for the first time by an Austrian ambassador. The first public monument in Russia, an equestrian statue of Peter by Etienne Falconet which is known as The Bronze Horseman, was commissioned by the tsar’s self-styled ‘spiritual daughter’ and unveiled in 1782. In a March 2020 photo, a statue of Catherine II stands behind a meeting between Turkish President Erdogan and Putin. Perhaps the empress is a good source of inspiration for Putin’s strategies, but should the Pope recall her before a crowd of young Russian Catholics?
Catherine, who reigned in Russia from 1762 to 1796, was only the ‘spiritual daughter’ of Peter because her father was Prince Christian August, of the ruling German family of Anhalt. In the years 1767-1771, Voltaire, based on materials provided by Russian diplomats, wrote a number of brochures in which he supported the political and military involvement of Catherine II (or the “Semiramis of the North,” as the philosopher called her) in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1764, she placed her estranged lover, Stanislaw Poniatowski, on the Polish throne. Between 1768 and 1774, she staged a Russo-Turkish war against the Ottoman Empire, and in 1783, she annexed Crimea (sound familiar?). Her meddling in the Polish elections and the three partitions in which Russia took part (with Austria and Prussia) ultimately liquidated the Polish state for 123 years.
Thanks to his great authority, Voltaire could influence many intellectual circles and prejudice them in favour of the Russian intervention in Poland. He built up the authority of the Russian Empress as a modernizing ruler who applied the ideas of the Enlightenment. He and other useful idiots of that era were paid back. Literally. With her own money (50,000 francs), Catherine bought the famous 2,900-volume library of Diderot, who supported himself with the funds from this transaction until the end of his life. She brought to Russia a huge collection of Voltaire’s works and allocated 100,000 rubles for their publication.
“There is a need for this beneficial enlightenment of knowing, while the darkness of hatred, which often comes from forgetfulness and indifference, intensifies in the world,” Pope Francis told a delegation from a university in Tblisi, Georgia, during an audience in February. The irony is that Pope Francis is especially guilty of such “forgetfulness and indifference,” as one-fifth of Georgian territory still remains under Russian occupation. Catherine was an ‘enlightened despot’ who published ideas about liberal governance. But what kind of enlightenment did the Pope’s young Russian audience have in mind when he mentioned the empress?
Historian Janet Hartley claims that Catherine had at least 12 lovers in her lifetime, before and after the death of her husband. One of them, Orlov, helped overthrow her husband and plotted his death. The erotic life of the empress is the subject of sordid legends that Catholic youth should not be familiar with. But Catherine is often presented as one of history’s most accomplished female monarchs. Even more so after 2019, when HBO released Catherine the Great with Helen Mirren. The show had lots of obscenity, but it also emphasized her famous ‘work ethics’ and interest in science, including her smallpox inoculation campaign. As one liberal author put it:
Her legacy as a great leader was unfortunately sullied by misogynistic rumours about her personal life … We know that Catherine enjoyed a degree of sexual liberation throughout her reign, a result of the fact that she was an independent woman who had usurped (and possibly approved the killing of) her husband Peter III.
The Synod on Synodality, called to examine ‘power structures’ in the Catholic Church, will grapple with the role of women. And therefore the Pope’s mention of Catherine ‘the Great’ is important. In January of this year, the American Cardinal, Robert McElroy, declared in an essay published in America: The Jesuit Review: “[T]he exclusion of men and women because of their marital status or their sexual orientation/activity is pre-eminently a pastoral question, not a doctrinal one.” Perhaps, then, Pope Francis’ mention of the empress should be read in the context of discussions of sexuality at the Synod on Synodality? It would be absurd to assume that the Pope might refer to Catherine’s ‘humanity’ as an example of greatness. It would not be absurd, however, to suggest that her story can be non-judgmentally included in this Pope’s vision of the Church.
The reforming passions of both Peter and Catherine had something in common. She was a German fascinated by Russia; he was a Russian fascinated by Germany. Each of them translated these personal fascinations into an implementable vision for the Church. Catherine thought big. Her war against the Ottoman Empire, including the 1783 annexation of Crimea, was part of a larger, quasi-religious, ideological project, namely to restore Byzantium and reconstruct the Second Rome. A year earlier, in 1782, Catherine had officially approved the so-called Greek project, for the dissolution of the Turkish Empire and the rise of a ‘new Greek Empire,’ over which the empress’s grandson, Constantine Pavlovich, would reign as Emperor Constantine II. I would not be surprised if some of the Pope’s Russian audience members recalled these events at Francis’ mention of Catherine. But are there no better role models to encourage young Russians to dream big?
In case the Russian Catholics did actually decide to dream big, Catherine’s story provides a warning. Immediately after the annexation of the Polish territories, where Greek Catholics (the Uniates) were the majority, the Russian government forced the people there to change their religion. The coordinator of World Youth Day, Lisbon auxiliary bishop (soon to be a cardinal) Américo Aguiar, said in an interview on the 6th of July, that, at WYD 2023, “we don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all.” The fear of being accused of ‘proselytism’ is high on the Pope’s concerns. The history of Catherine II’s policy in this area may offer a warning to those young Russian Catholics who may dream too big and be tempted to proselytize their peers.
Ugly figures, that Russian emperor and empress. I wonder why the Pope mentioned their names. Maybe they tell us more about him than about the young Russian Catholics he addressed. I dread to think that one day he might also make off-the-cuff remarks in an improvised speech to German youth.
