Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Jovita Neliupšienė met with the Vatican’s envoy to Lithuania in early September to discuss Pope Francis’ recent remarks about Russia, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
“Deputy Minister Jovita Neliupšienė met with the Apostolic Nuncio for a conversation on September 8,” Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Paulina Levickytė told BNS.
The ministry would not comment on the content of the meeting which was not announced in advance.
Levickytė said, however, that no diplomatic note was handed to the nuncio during the meeting.
The Nunciature of the Holy See in Lithuania also refrained from commenting on the meeting.
The ministry said in late August that it was planning to invite Petar Rajic, the Vatican’s envoy to Lithuania, “for a conversation” in response to the pontiff’s remarks about Russia and its culture.
The meeting was originally scheduled for September 6. The ministry said on that day that the meeting was postponed due to the nuncio’s holiday, but it did not announce a new date.
Pope Francis said in a video address to young Catholics in St. Petersburg in August that “you are children of great Russia, of great saints, of kings, of Peter the Great, of Catherine II, of a Russian people of great culture and great humanity”.
Kyiv accused the pontiff of spreading “imperial propaganda”.
The Vatican’s spokesperson Matteo Bruni later issued a statement saying that the Pope’s remarks were intended “to encourage young people to preserve and promote what is positive in Russia’s great cultural and spiritual heritage, and certainly not to glorify imperialistic logics and governmental personalities”.
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